What are your intuitions about this? It has direct implications for whether the Simulation Argument is sound.

 

Imagine two rooms, A and B. Between times t1 and t2, 100 trillion people sojourn in room A while 100 billion sojourn in room B. At any given moment, though, exactly 1 person occupies room A while 1,000 people occupy room B. At t2, you find yourself in a room, but you don't know which one. If you have to place a bet on which room it is (at t2), what do you say? Do you consider the time-slice or the history of room occupants? How do you place your bet?

 

If you bet that you're in room B, then the Simulation Argument may be flawed: there could be a fourth disjunct that Bostrom misses, namely that we become a posthuman civilization that runs a huge number of simulations yet we don't have reason for believing that we're stimulants.

 

Thoughts?

This is great, by using small interlocking magnetic fields, you can keep the water in a higher vibrational state, allowing a "super-cooling" without getting crystallization and cell rupture

Subzero 12-hour Nonfreezing Cryopreservation of Porcine Heart in a Variable Magnetic Field

"invented a special refrigerator, termed as the Cells Alive System (CAS; ABI Co. Ltd., Chiba, Japan). Through the application of a combination of multiple weak energy sources, this refrigerator generates a special variable magnetic field that causes water molecules to oscillate, thus inhibiting crystallization during ice formation18 (Figure 1). Because the entire material is frozen without the movement of water molecules, cells can be maintained intact and free of membranous damage. This refrigerator has the ability to achieve a nonfreezing state even below the solidifying point."

 

http://mobile.journals.lww.com/transplantationdirect/_layouts/15/oaks.journals.mobile/articleviewer.aspx?year=2015&issue=10000&article=00005#ath

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Hi all,

Mostly lurker, I very rarely post, mostly  just read the excellent posts here.

I'm a Filipino, which means I am a citizen of the Republic of the Philippines.  My annual salary, before taxes, is about $20,000 (USA dollars).  I work at an IC development company (12 years at this company), developing the logic parts of LCD display drivers.  My understanding is that the median US salary for this kind of job is about $80,000 -> $100,000 a year.  This is a fucking worthless third world country, so the government eats up about ~30% of my salary and converts it to lousy service, rich government officials, bad roadworks, long commute times, and a (tiny) chance of being falsely accused of involvement in the drug trade and shot without trial.  Thus my take-home pay amounts to about $15,000 a year.  China is also murmuring vague threats about war because of the South China Sea (which the local intelligentsia insist on calling the West Philippine Sea); as we all know, the best way to survive a war is not be in one.

This has lead to my deep dissatisfaction with my current job.

I'm also a programmer as a hobby, and have been programming for 23 years (I started at 10 years old on Atari LOGO; I know a bunch of languages from low-level X86 assembly to C to C++ to ECMAScript to Haskell, and am co-author of SRFI-105 and SRFI-110).  My understanding is that a USA programmer would *start* at the $20,000-a-year level (?), and that someone with experience can probably get twice that, and a senior one can get $100,000/year.

As we all know, once a third world citizen starts having first world skill level, he starts demanding first world renumeration also.

I've been offered a senior software developer job at a software company, offering approximately $22,000/year; because of various attempts at tax reform it offers a flat 15% income tax, so I can expect about $18,000/year take home pay.  I've turned it down with a heavy heart, because seriously, $22,000/year at 15% tax for a senior software developer?

Leaving my current job is something I've been planning on doing, and I intend to do so early next year.  The increasing stress (constant overtime, management responsibilities (I'm a tech geek with passable social skills, and exercising my social skills drains me), 1.5-hour commutes) and the low renumeration makes me want to consider my alternate options.

My options are:

1.  Get myself to the USA, Europe, or other first-world country somehow, and look for a job there.  High risk, high reward, much higher probability of surviving to the singularity (can get cryonics there, can't get it here).  Complications: I have a family: a wife, a 4-year-old daughter, and a son on the way.  My wife wants to be near me, so it's difficult to live for long apart.  I have no work visa for any first-world country.  I'm from a third-world country that is sometimes put on terrorist watch lists, and prejudice is always high in first-world countries.

2.  Do freelance programming work.  Closer to free market ideal, so presumably I can get nearer to the USA levels of renumeration.  Lets me stay with my family.  Complications: I need to handle a lot of the human resources work myself (healthcare provider, social security, tax computations, time and task management - the last is something I do now in my current job position, but I dislike it).

3.  Become a landowning farmer.  My paternal grandparents have quite a few parcels of land (some of which have been transferred to my father, who is willing to pass it on to me), admittedly somewhere in the boondocks of the provinces of this country, but as any Georgian knows, landowners can sit in a corner staring at the sky, blocking the occasional land reform bill, and earn money.  Complications: I have no idea about farming.  I'd actually love to advocate a land value tax, which would undercut my position as a landowner.

For now, my basic current plan is some combination of #2 and #3 above: go sit in a corner of our clan's land and do freelance programming work.  This keeps me with my family, may reduce my level of stress, may increase my renumeration to nearer the USA levels.

My current job has a retirement pay, and since I've worked for 12 years, I've already triggered it, and they'll give me about $16,000 or so when I leave.  This seems reasonably comfortable to live on (note that this is what I take home in a year, and I've supported a family on that, remember this is a lousy third-world country).

Is my basic plan sound?  I'm trying to become more optimal, which seems to me to point me away from my current job and towards either #1 or #2, with #3 as a fallback.  I'd love to get cryonics and will start to convince my wife of its sensibility if I had a chance to actually get it, but that will require me either leaving the country (option #1 above) or running a cryonics company in a third-world country myself.

--

I got introduced to Less Wrong when I first read on Reddit about some weirdo who was betting he could pretend he was a computer in a box and convince someone to let him out of the box, and started lurking on Overcoming Bias.  When that weirdo moved over to Less Wrong, I followed and lurked there also.  So here I am ^^.  I'm probably very atypical even for Less Wrong; I highly suspect I am the only Filipino here (I'll have to check the diaspora survey results in detail).

Looking back, my big mistake was being arrogant and thinking "meh, I already know programming, so I should go for a challenge, why don't I take up electronics engineering instead because I don't know about it" back when I was choosing a college course.  Now I'm an IC developer.  Two of my cousins (who I can beat the pants off in a programming task) went with software engineering and pull in more money than I do.  Still, maybe I can correct that, even if it's over a decade late.  I really need to apply more of what I learn on Less Wrong.

Some years ago I applied for a CFAR class, but couldn't afford it, sigh.  Even today it's a few month's worth of salary for me.  So I guess I'll just have to settle for Less Wrong and Rationality from AI to Zombies.

 

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.

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There are many natural global risks. The greatest of these known risks are asteroid impacts and supervolcanos. 

Supervolcanos seem to pose the highest risk, as we sit on the ocean of molten iron, oversaturated with dissolved gases, just 3000 km below surface and its energy slowly moving up via hot spots. Many past extinctions are also connected with large eruptions from supervolcanos. 

Impacts also pose a significant risk. But, if we project the past rate of large extinctions due to impacts into the future, we will see that they occur only once in several million years. Thus, the likelihood of an asteroid impact in the next century is an order of magnitude of 1 in 100 000. That is negligibly small compared with the risks of AI, nanotech, biotech, etc.

The main natural risk is a meta-risk. Are we able to correctly estimate natural risks rates and project them into the future? And also, could we accidentally unleash natural catastrophe which is long overdue?

There are several reasons for possible underestimation, which are listed in the right column of the map. 

1. Anthropic shadow that is survival bias. This is a well-established idea by Bostrom, but the following four ideas are mostly my conclusions from it.

2. It is also the fact that we should find ourselves at the end of period of stability for any important aspect of our environment (atmosphere, sun stability, crust stability, vacuum stability). It is true if the Rare Earth hypothesis is true and our conditions are very unique in the universe.

3. From (2) is following that our environment may be very fragile for human interventions (think about global warming). Its fragility is like fragility of an overblown balloon poked by small needle.

4. Also, human intelligence was best adaptation instrument during the period of intense climate changes, which quickly evolved in an always changing environment. So, it should not be surprising that we find ourselves in a period of instability (think of Toba eruption, Clovis comet, Young drias, Ice ages) and in an unstable environment, as it help general intelligence to evolve.

5. Period of changes are themselves marks of the end of stability periods for many process and are precursors for larger catastrophes. (For example, intermittent ice ages may precede Snow ball Earth, or smaller impacts with comets debris may precede an impact with larger remnants of the main body). 

Each of these five points may raise the probability of natural risks by order of magnitude in my opinion, which combined will result in several orders of magnitude, which seems to be too high and probably is "catastrophism bias".

(More about it is in my article “Why anthropic principle stopped to defend us”  which needs substantial revision) 

In conclusion, I think that when studying natural risks, a key aspect we should be checking is the hypothesis that we live in non-typical period in a very fragile environment.

For example, some scientists think that 30 000 years ago, a large Centaris comet broke into the inner Solar system, split into pieces (including Encke comet and Taurid meteor showers as well as Tunguska body) and we live in the period of bombardment which has 100 times more intensity than average. Others believe that methane hydrates are very fragile and small human warming could result in dangerous positive feed back.  

I tried to list all known natural risks (I am interested in new suggestions). I divided them into two classes: proven and speculative. Most speculative risks are probably false.

Most probable risks in the map are marked red. My crazy ideas are marked green. Some ideas come from obscure Russian literature. For example, an idea, that hydro carbonates could be created naturally inside Earth (like abiogenic oil) and large pockets of them could accumulate in the mantle. Some of them could be natural explosives, like toluene, and they could be cause of kimberlitic explosions. http://www.geokniga.org/books/6908 While the fact of kimberlitic explosion is well known and their energy is like impact of kilometer sized asteroids, I never read about contemporary risks of such explosions.

The pdf of the map is here: http://immortality-roadmap.com/naturalrisks11.pdf

 

Recently Phil Torres wrote an article  where he raises a new topic in existential risks research: the question about who could be possible agents in the creation of a global catastrophe. Here he identifies five main types of agents, and two main reasons why they will create a catastrophe (error and terror).  

He discusses the following types of agents: 

 

(1) Superintelligence. 

(2) Idiosyncratic actors.  

(3) Ecoterrorists.  

(4) Religious terrorists.  

(5) Rogue states.  

 

Inspired by his work I decided to create a map of all possible agents as well as their possible reasons for creating x-risks. During this work some new ideas appeared.  

I think that a significant addition to the list of agents should be superpowers, as they are known to have created most global risks in the 20th century; corporations, as they are now on the front line of AGI creation; and pseudo-rational agents who could create a Doomsday weapon in the future to use for global blackmail (may be with positive values), or who could risk civilization’s fate for their own benefits (dangerous experiments). 

The X-risks prevention community could also be an agent of risks if it fails to prevent obvious risks, or if it uses smaller catastrophes to prevent large risks, or if it creates new dangerous ideas of possible risks which could inspire potential terrorists.  

The more technology progresses, the more types of agents will have access to dangerous technologies, even including teenagers. (like: "Why This 14-Year-Old Kid Built a Nuclear Reactor” ) 

In this situation only the number of agents with risky tech will matter, not the exact motivations of each one. But if we are unable to control tech, we could try to control potential agents or their “medium" mood at least. 

The map shows various types of agents, starting from non-agents, and ending with types of agential behaviors which could result in catastrophic consequences (error, terror, risk etc). It also shows the types of risks that are more probable for each type of agent. I think that my explanation in each case should be self evident. 

We could also show that x-risk agents will change during the pace of technological progress. In the beginning there are no agents, and later there are superpowers, and then smaller and smaller agents, until there will be millions of people with biotech labs at home. In the end there will be only one agent - SuperAI.  

So, a lessening the number of agents, and increasing their ”morality” and intelligence seem to be the most plausible directions in lowering risks. Special organizations or social networks may be created to control the most risky type of agents. Differing agents probably need differing types of control. Some ideas of this agent-specific control are listed in the map, but a real control system should be much more complex and specific.

The map shows many agents, some of them real and exist now (but don’t have dangerous capabilities), and some are only possible in moral sense or in technical sense.

 

So there are 4 types of agents, and I show them in the map in different colours:

 

1) Existing and dangerous, that is already having technology to destroy the humanity. That is superpowers, arrogant scientists – Red

2) Existing, and willing to end the world, but lacking needed technologies. (ISIS, VHEMt) - Yellow

3) Morally possible, but don’t existing. We could imagine logically consistent value systems which may result in human extinction. That is Doomsday blackmail. - Green

4) Agents, which will pose risk only after supertechnologies appear, like AI-hackers, children biohackers. - Blue

 

Many agents types are not fit for this classification so I rest them white in the map. 

 

The pdf of the map is here: http://immortality-roadmap.com/agentrisk11.pdf

 

 

 

 

(The jpg of the map is below because side bar is closing part of it I put it higher)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(The jpg of the map is below because side bar is closing part of it I put it higher)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know to what extent MIRI's current research engages with Solomonoff induction, but some of you may find recent work by Tom Sterkenburg to be of interest. Here's the abstract of his paper Solomonoff Prediction and Occam's Razor:

Algorithmic information theory gives an idealised notion of compressibility that is often presented as an objective measure of simplicity. It is suggested at times that Solomonoff prediction, or algorithmic information theory in a predictive setting, can deliver an argument to justify Occam's razor. This article explicates the relevant argument and, by converting it into a Bayesian framework, reveals why it has no such justificatory force. The supposed simplicity concept is better perceived as a specific inductive assumption, the assumption of effectiveness. It is this assumption that is the characterising element of Solomonoff prediction and wherein its philosophical interest lies.

Apple's iPhone 7 Plus decided to add another lense to be able to make better pictures. Meanwhile Walabot who started with wanting to build a breast cancer detection technology released a 600$ device that can look 10cm into walls. Thermal imaging also got cheaper. 

I think it would be possible to build a 1500$ device that could combine those technologies and also add a laser that can shift color. A device like this could bring medicine forward a lot. 
A lot of area's besides medicine could likely also profit from a relatively cheap 3D scanner that can look inside objects. 

Developing it would require Musk-level capital investments but I think it would advance medicine a lot if a company would both provide the hardware and develop software to make the best job possible at body scanning. 

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.

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This summary was posted to LW Main on September 30th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

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Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, Kraków, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in:

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This summary was posted to LW Main on October 14th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

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Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, Kraków, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, St. Petersburg, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

This summary was posted to LW Main on October 7th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

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Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, Kraków, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.