Posts

Manhattan USA - ACX Meetups Everywhere Fall 2024 2024-08-29T18:42:44.332Z
Data on AI 2024-06-20T06:31:57.216Z
Manhattan – ACX Meetups Everywhere Spring 2024 2024-03-30T11:17:07.183Z
Announcing Epoch's newly expanded Parameters, Compute and Data Trends in Machine Learning database 2023-10-25T02:55:07.440Z
Manhattan, New York, USA – ACX Meetups Everywhere Fall 2023 2023-08-25T23:42:38.382Z
(LOCATION CHANGED) Manhattan, New York, USA – ACX Meetups Everywhere Spring 2023 2023-04-10T22:13:28.062Z
Boston, MA – ACX Meetups Everywhere 2022 2022-08-24T23:00:17.341Z
Astral Codex Ten Meetups Everywhere: Boston 2022 2022-08-18T03:48:29.043Z
Boston/Cambridge, MA – ACX Meetups Everywhere 2021 2021-08-23T08:53:10.366Z
Slate Star Codex Meetup 2019-12-31T02:51:53.986Z
Slate Star Codex New Year's Eve Party 2019-12-31T02:14:42.191Z
DC Meetup 2019-09-29T22:37:57.552Z
Scott Alexander visits DC 2019-09-11T22:31:53.808Z
DC SSC Meetup 2019-08-05T16:19:08.810Z
DC SSC Meetup 2019-08-05T16:16:53.740Z
Washington SSC Meetup 2019-06-03T19:30:45.751Z
Washington SSC Meetup - Anniversary Party! 2019-03-16T21:02:42.885Z
2018 Year In Review 2018-12-31T01:50:43.753Z
SSC Meetup in Washington, DC 2018-10-30T12:29:28.010Z
SSC Meetup in Rockville, MD 2018-10-30T12:27:36.607Z
Welcome to the Washington, DC Slate Star Codex Meetup 2018-04-18T20:36:55.852Z

Comments

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on 60+ Possible Futures · 2024-01-06T04:09:11.259Z · LW · GW

I think the "Successful Treaty" and "Terrorists" scenarios are impossible as written.

There's too much economic incentive to create AGI. With algorithmic and hardware progress, eventually it will become possible to make an AGI with slightly more computing hardware than a gaming laptop, and then it'll be impossible to stop everyone from doing it.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on "AI and Compute" trend isn't predictive of what is happening · 2023-12-01T17:32:41.211Z · LW · GW

Correction: AlphaStar used 6*10^22 FLOP, not 2*10^23. You have mixed up TPU chips and TPU boards.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Who Has the Best Food? · 2023-09-06T00:46:50.047Z · LW · GW

What does McDonald's sell in France?

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on The Brain is Not Close to Thermodynamic Limits on Computation · 2023-04-28T21:28:35.596Z · LW · GW

Ingenuous was my first thought too, but it doesn't have the meaning I think you intended. Perhaps disingenuous?

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on The Brain is Not Close to Thermodynamic Limits on Computation · 2023-04-26T15:16:07.087Z · LW · GW

But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it to collapse in deepest humiliation. ― Arthur Eddington

I think you meant "there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation".

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on The Brain is Not Close to Thermodynamic Limits on Computation · 2023-04-26T15:14:40.862Z · LW · GW

It is completely ingenious to mention only Frank for that claim

Ingenious? You mean misleading?

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on [RETRACTED] It's time for EA leadership to pull the short-timelines fire alarm. · 2023-03-28T21:54:08.694Z · LW · GW

One year later, in light of the ChatGPT internet and shell plugins, do you still think this is just a theoretical thing? Should we worry about it yet?

The fire alarm sentiment seems to have been entirely warranted, even if the plan proposed in the post wouldn't have been helpful.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on AstralCodexTen and Rationality Meetup Organisers’ Retreat — Europe, Middle East, and Africa 2023 · 2022-10-06T18:40:09.429Z · LW · GW

Why is the application deadline this month if the retreat is happening next summer?

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Boston ACX Board Gaming · 2022-04-19T15:30:20.383Z · LW · GW

I'll be bringing Wits & Wagers, Just One, Secret Hitler, and Innovation.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Jokes Thread · 2021-11-28T13:47:17.088Z · LW · GW

Lumifer was using the word "expected" correctly.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Jokes Thread · 2021-11-28T13:46:35.973Z · LW · GW

It's awful that you were downvoted in this thread when you were mostly right and the others were mostly wrong. I'm updating my estimate of LW's average intelligence downward.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Jokes Thread · 2021-11-28T13:45:02.820Z · LW · GW

No it doesn't! A coin biased towards heads can have p(H) = 0.6, p(T) = 0.4, and each flip can be an independent trial. The total results from many flips will then be Poisson distributed.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Slate Star Codex Meetup · 2021-08-02T06:56:23.718Z · LW · GW

They're Saturdays at 19:00, but not necessarily the 2nd weekend of the month. We kind of just poll the attendees at the end of each meetup and find out when people are available next month.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Slate Star Codex Meetup · 2021-07-28T03:34:06.007Z · LW · GW

The meetups are ongoing! We've had meetups for the past 50+ consecutive months with no interruptions, although we had to be outdoors and sparsely distanced during quarantine.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on No Safe Defense, Not Even Science · 2017-08-18T01:11:01.705Z · LW · GW

It's another subsidy to agribusiness conglomerates, which leech huge sums of money from taxpayers already.

And it uses up the corn so it can't be sold to hungry poor people, which is bad because starvation is bad.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games · 2017-02-08T10:35:04.536Z · LW · GW

I'll be there! What games should I bring?

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games · 2016-06-12T12:05:23.564Z · LW · GW

I'll probably be there today! What games should I bring?

Edit: Couldn't make it this week, sorry :(

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Lesswrong 2016 Survey · 2016-05-05T17:28:48.520Z · LW · GW

When will the survey results be published?

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Lesswrong 2016 Survey · 2016-05-05T17:28:30.697Z · LW · GW

Someone said elsewhere in this thread that if you stop in the middle of the survey, it does record the answers you put in before quitting.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Are wireheads happy? · 2016-05-02T20:47:57.518Z · LW · GW

This summarizes a common strain of thought in economics, the idea of "revealed preferences". People tend to say they like a lot of things, like family or the environment or a friendly workplace. Many of the same people who say these things then go and ignore their families, pollute, and take high-paying but stressful jobs. The traditional economic explanation is that the people's actions reveal their true preferences, and that all the talk about caring about family and the environment is just stuff people say to look good and gain status.

I think you are mischaracterizing the concept of revealed preference. It's not that they claim to care about family or the environment "just for status", but rather, they exaggerate how much they care about one thing relative to another. For example, when I was overweight, I used to say stuff like "I want to be skinny". But I'd keep eating junk food anyway. The reality was that I wanted to eat junk food more than I wanted to be healthy. (Maybe not long-term: hyperbolic discounting can explain this, since people over-weight rewards that come sooner, so even people who will pick an apple instead of a cookie for tomorrow's lunch might be tempted enough to eat the cookie when the choice is right in front of them.) Nowadays, I enjoy being healthy more than I enjoy the taste of ice cream, so I can convince myself to stop eating it if I think about the downsides.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on The Validity of the Anthropic Principle · 2016-04-26T03:44:02.707Z · LW · GW

I can’t actually remember the exact process/theorem in order to determine probabilities from betting odds. Can anyone link it to me?

From this article:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp/0_and_1_are_not_probabilities/

In the usual way of writing probabilities, probabilities are between 0 and 1. A coin might have a probability of 0.5 of coming up tails, or the weatherman might assign probability 0.9 to rain tomorrow.

This isn't the only way of writing probabilities, though. For example, you can transform probabilities into odds via the transformation O = (P / (1 - P)). So a probability of 50% would go to odds of 0.5/0.5 or 1, usually written 1:1, while a probability of 0.9 would go to odds of 0.9/0.1 or 9, usually written 9:1. To take odds back to probabilities you use P = (O / (1 + O)), and this is perfectly reversible, so the transformation is an isomorphism—a two-way reversible mapping. Thus, probabilities and odds are isomorphic, and you can use one or the other according to convenience.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on The Sin of Underconfidence · 2016-03-17T04:23:53.776Z · LW · GW

Did this debate ever end up happening? If it did, is there a transcript available somewhere?

Edit: Found in another comment that WLC turned down the debate.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Avoiding Your Belief's Real Weak Points · 2016-01-15T16:53:56.143Z · LW · GW

I don't think God's cruelty in the Bible is evidence that there isn't any god, but it is evidence against the benevolent, omniscient, personal, omnipotent kind of theism that Christians and Jews would argue for.

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Monthly Bragging Thread January 2016 · 2016-01-13T00:15:22.614Z · LW · GW

You're the author of putanumonit?? I'd like to take this opportunity to say that your blog is amazing and I love it. Please write more soon!

Comment by Robi Rahman (robirahman) on Of Gender and Rationality · 2016-01-12T21:25:16.133Z · LW · GW

Is there somewhere I can find a comprehensive list of mental skills that men are typically worse at than women? I'm male and it just occurred to me that I probably ought to practice those.