Comment author: Lumifer 16 July 2016 11:10:19PM 0 points [-]

It's illegal to hurt the people who created the global catastrophic risks, so count me out. I don't work for free.

Do you consider hurting "the people who created the global catastrophic risks" payment?

Comment author: Algernoq 17 July 2016 08:16:03AM *  1 point [-]

No...Voldemort isn't altruistic, and considers the "global community" too disorganized to be an ally worth seeking favor with.

Comment author: hg00 17 July 2016 01:40:05AM *  -1 points [-]

I refuse to sacrifice my life to protect billionaires who would not do the same for me.

Elon Musk has risked his entire fortune for you. "In my case, I think these things are important... I need to do it, I promised people I would do it, but I'm not doing it because this is the most fun way to live."

The world's wealthiest people (the "ownership class") is increasingly made up of scientists and engineers:

If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each person with an MBA, you'll learn something important about business school. After Warren Buffett, you don't hit another MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike. There are only 5 MBAs in the top 50. What you notice in the Forbes 400 are a lot of people with technical backgrounds. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. The rulers of the technology business tend to come from technology, not business.

- Paul Graham

Paul has written 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 essays that touch on the topic of why cooperators tend to get rich in Silicon Valley rather than defectors. The Silicon Valley elite is giving their money away significantly earlier in life than previous generations of wealthy people, and there are indicators that they care more about having their philanthropic dollars actually do good--here's tech billionaire Sean Parker on his giving philosophy. (Not to say that other wealthy people are especially lacking in their philanthropy--check out the Giving Pledge signatories.)

Scientists get less sex than criminals.

High IQ people, regardless of gender, have less sex. But it's hard to tease out exactly why. I lean towards Paul Graham's explanation--highly intelligent people tend to be interested in things other than sex, whereas average people structure large amounts of their lives around it (for example, it's typical for every Friday and Saturday evening to be spent drinking carcinogens and searching for sexual partners). More evidence for this hypothesis: Intelligent people seem to be taller and better looking on average. And intelligent friends of mine who have chosen to optimize for having more sexual partners have done well, especially if they're willing to date down in intelligence (to avoid the problem that highly intelligent women are outnumbered by highly intelligent men and also relatively uninterested in sex) and live in an area with a favorable gender ratio. If you want more sexual partners, a good first step is to start working out--it will give you a masculine physique, help you live longer, improve sleep, improve immune system, improve willpower, etc. Once you've spent some time optimizing to increase your number of sexual partners, you'll likely feel less insecure about who your girlfriends have slept with. (And once you've conquered your insecurities, you can work on cool stuff like decreasing existential risk.)

(BTW note that there are more women graduating college nowadays than men, at least in the US, so being educated gives you a leg up.)

all of my ex-girlfriends had sex with someone who doesn't share my values

You're looking at a small number of data points. Psychological research, insofar as it relates to this topic, is more mixed. Research also seems to indicate that having lots of sexual partners is associated with decreased happiness. Those dominant "defector" types are often rejected by women for longer-term relationships, which sucks a lot more than you would think (speaking from personal experience as someone with a dominant/masculinized facial appearance).

It's illegal to punish people who always defect in prisoner's dilemmas.

If there's a particular sort of defection you are concerned about, you can work to change society in order to disincentivize it. This probably isn't the best example, but I've always wondered why we don't punish rapists (and maybe other criminals) with castration. It seems like something that both the far left and the far right could get behind--the far left is full of feminists who think rapists are unadulterated evil, and the far right can appreciate the eugenic benefits of sterilizing criminals. It's cheaper and more humane than locking someone in a hellish prison cell for years on end. It helps solve the root problem, given testosterone's role in facilitating aggression. And it sends the right message to other folks in society. "Here's a man who defected against the rest of us. He speaks in a high voice now because we literally chopped his balls off. He tried to rape a woman, but now he will never have sex again." I think castrated criminals who lived in lower class communities would inevitably get bullied and made fun of, which seems like exactly what we want to happen (as long as someone is going to get bullied and made fun of in lower class communities, which seems inevitable).

Comment author: Algernoq 17 July 2016 07:33:03AM *  4 points [-]

A lot of great topics here.

Elon Musk has risked his entire fortune for you.

I am a huge fan of Elon Musk.

I suspect a big reason Mr. Musk tries to make the greatest possible positive difference for humanity is to reduce his risk of being murdered by established players. He’s pissed off a lot of powerful people, but provided benefits to many more.

He was forced out of controlling PayPal...and his vision for PayPal was to make it a “full-service financial institution”. He wanted to “convert the financial system from a series of heterogeneous insecure databases to one database.” This is threatening to the global elite in a way that going to Mars is not. Thus, he was forced out.

While he risked his personal fortune on SpaceX in 2013 when it looked like they would run out of money, he also had plans to sell a large interest in Tesla to Google in order to acquire funding for additional SpaceX launches. The story he tells about betting all of his assets with no recourse is true but under-emphasizes his backup plans for additional launches.

Paul has written 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 essays that touch on the topic of why cooperators tend to get rich in Silicon Valley rather than defectors.

I am a huge fan of Paul Graham as well.

However, his advice can mislead young technical people into thinking that a startup is going to make them rich. He says, “If you wanted to get rich, how would you do it? I think your best bet would be to start or join a startup....you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years”. But in reality most startups fail and waste 5 years of the founders’ time in the process. Plus, for every founder, there are dozens of joiners/employees who work for below-market-rate salary plus a small percentage (often 0.1%) of the new company. Thus, his advice to “start or join a startup” is dangerously misleading because his target audience is young technical people without the political or sales skills to actually succeed.

Arguing for the opposition is Michael Church. I was intrigued by The 3-Ladder System of Social Class in the US (summary: college-educated technologists learned how to make wealth, not how to own it) and his VC-istan series (summary: Silicon Valley got colonized by MBA financiers who extracted all the goodwill). He alleges he deleted his blog archive and left the Valley because of threats from financiers affiliated with Paul Graham.

The Forbes 400 does not and cannot track privately-held wealth. Thus, the Forbes 400 only includes rich people who wanted to appear there.

Sean Parker on his giving philosophy...

That’s a marketing piece. Rich people often hide their wealth, but if they can’t they market themselves as hyper-successful good people, not as the driven perfectionist tyrants they often are. As the MacLeod Hierarchy explains, rank-and-file workers work best if they think they’re climbing a career ladder. Rich people climbed a different ladder, then hid it.

There’s a tradition of robber barons giving away vast wealth to manage their public image.

highly intelligent people tend to be interested in things other than sex,

I agree with this.

But it's hard to tease out exactly why.

The truth is not just politically incorrect; the truth is disgusting and offensive.

The Red Pill says is clearly: women want good genes and good resources. This means that men with good genes have the opportunity for lots of sex, and men with good resources get strung along in sexless relationships, and men with neither good genes (looks) nor good resources (money/power) get nothing except shame. Women want the best they can get, so the top 10% of men have sex with the top 80% of women. Below-average men get nothing. Traditional marriage is illegal (“until death do us part” is legally unenforceable). Many women try to copy the behavior of the most attractive men -- promiscuous casual sex that they lie about -- and then settle down with someone much less attractive than their casual sex partners once they reach their late 20s. And for men: most men are weak, emotionally-manipulated, directionless sheep.

This explains why rock band front-men, criminals, and selfish finance bros enjoy lots of sex despite their toxic behavior: they have looks plus power.

If you want more sexual partners, a good first step is to start working out

Yup. Will do. To be clear, the advice is to develop a ripped body that generates tingly feelings in women’s vaginas, not to “be a good person” or “make a positive difference” or even “have a job”. We deserve the coming global Apocalypse.

you'll likely feel less insecure about who your girlfriends have slept with.

So it was OK for them to lie to me? Fuck you. If that’s how it works, I’m gonna go date 5 young women at the same time by telling them lies, then blame them for being insecure when the truth comes out.

Do not mistake my righteous anger for “insecurity”. That’s what old women do when they’re trying to shame a man into marrying them.

you can work on cool stuff like decreasing existential risk.

I don’t see how this would benefit me. “Cool” is a fossilized instinct for what is powerful. I’d rather go get what will really make me powerful: a shitload of money, and skill at building alliances I control.

Research also seems to indicate that having lots of sexual partners is associated with decreased happiness.

For women, definitely. For men, the data is inconclusive.

Those dominant "defector" types are often rejected by women for longer-term relationships

Did you start acting like a non-dominant non-defector type, and get dumped soon after? Or did you become less attractive/successful/high-status over time? The struggle is real.

Psychological research, insofar as it relates to this topic, is more mixed.

The Art of Manliness is clickbait for unsuccessful beta males. A psychological survey is a hilariously inaccurate methodology for gaining insight into a biological response.

If there's a particular sort of defection you are concerned about, you can work to change society in order to disincentivize it.

I don’t have the power to make a difference.

For example, I want to make it illegal to lie about one’s relationship status and sexual history. But, I can’t at my current power level. More specifically: I have met 3 different employees of a certain investment bank, who all were more sexually successful than me despite routinely lying to women to get sex. One tried to seduce my girlfriend at the time despite having one “girlfriend” and several “casual sex partners” who were unaware of each other, and who he implied possible long-term relationship potential with. Another tried to set me up with a woman he was tired of seeing (she wanted a relationship; he just wanted sex) without disclosing that he had had sex with them. A 3rd talked to me about startup projects while badly hiding the micro-expressions for “smugness/contempt” and “duping delight” and then predictably failed to follow up. I’m pretty sure at least 2 of these guys are into spreading genital herpes. But, I looked up the slander laws and it’s illegal for me to publicly shame these selfish men or their firm without recorded evidence (there’s a presumption of innocence), and it’s illegal for me to collect that evidence (two-party consent required for recording, and they avoid using email for their games). Thus, they win, and I lose, and their sex partners lose, and the people they do business with lose (their attitude carries over to their business dealings...it’s all about wealth extraction.).) Check out Wall Street Playboys for a description of the “finance bro attitude” including advice about being attractive enough for someone in a relationship to want to cheat with. I’ve thought about creating some sort of morality Leviathan app, to track people’s “trust graphs” over time to provide a permanent record of who burned who, but this has the potential to go badly wrong.

Thus, I figured the best thing to do was to pull a Voldemort and go all-in on selfishness. Investing in other people and in relationships is a bad deal because the relationships inevitably end. Successful people only invest in relationships that they control. God is OK with animals violently killing each other all the time, with zero regard for suffering or fair play, and who am I to question God? The 48 Laws of Power (by Robert Greene) has some fascinating ideas about how to find common grounds to shit in.

This probably isn't the best example, but I've always wondered why we don't punish rapists (and maybe other criminals) with castration.

False convictions. “Cruel and unusual” punishments are illegal because they make people angry in a way just locking up the wrong person doesn’t. Can you imagine the rage of the Black Lives Matter movement if the US Government was routinely castrating rapists? Or, more accurately, rich people are against physical punishments because they can’t be undone (whereas a long prison sentence + enough expensive lawyers = freedom).

what we want to happen

Taking a step back here...I shouldn’t be this angry for this long with this little forward progress.

Better to choose a specific dream and make it happen.

Undisciplined flailing with no single clear goal has kept me middle-class for a decade.

Comment author: gjm 17 July 2016 01:02:02AM -1 points [-]

OP hasn't asked you to do anything; just presented some information that he hopes will help people trying to stop global catastrophic risks. If that's not a thing you want to do, it's just not addressed to you.

(You sound very angry and upset. This probably isn't a helpful thing to say right now, but I'll say it anyway: if you can get less angry that will probably help you be less upset.)

Comment author: Algernoq 17 July 2016 01:17:05AM 0 points [-]

True. Voldemort would have spent less time sulking than I have.

Comment author: gjm 16 July 2016 09:15:43PM -2 points [-]

This doesn't seem to have much to do with the OP.

Fuck this; I'm out.

Out of what?

Comment author: Algernoq 16 July 2016 10:25:52PM 1 point [-]

OP wants me to help stop global catastrophic risks.

It's illegal to hurt the people who created the global catastrophic risks, so count me out. I don't work for free. I'd rather enjoy a nice life.

"Why, no," said Professor Quirrell. "I stopped trying to be a hero, and went off to do something else I found more pleasant."

"What? " said Hermione without thinking at all. "That's horrible! "

Comment author: Algernoq 16 July 2016 08:15:25PM 2 points [-]

Assuming this is all true...it's not at all clear that cooperation is my best move.

I refuse to sacrifice my life to protect billionaires who would not do the same for me. I won't labor under pointlessly annoying conditions to protect an ownership class that despises the technological progress and growth that I worked to create.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but...scientists get less sex than criminals.

In my personal experience...all of my ex-girlfriends had sex with someone who doesn't share my values -- a criminal, a future lawyer/financier, or an actual Owner with inherited wealth -- before meeting me, and lied to me about it. I experienced mental anguish and other negative consequences as a result of this bad system.

It's not illegal to always defect in prisoner's dilemmas. It's illegal to punish people who always defect in prisoner's dilemmas.

Fuck this; I'm out.

Comment author: Algernoq 17 March 2016 06:17:24AM 0 points [-]

Modest proposal for Friendly AI research:

Create a moral framework that incentivizes assholes to cooperate.

Specifically, create a set of laws for a "community", with the laws applying only to members, that would attract finance guys, successful "unicorn" startup owners, politicians, drug dealers at the "regional manager" level, and other assholes.

Win condition: a "trust app" that everyone uses, that tells users how trustworthy every single person they meet is.

Lose condition: startup fund assholes end up with majority ownership of the first smarter-than-human-level general AI, and no one's given smart people an incentive not to hurt dumb people.

If you can't incentivize smart selfish people to "cooperate" instead of "defect", then why do you think you can incentivize an AI to be friendly? What's to stop a troll from deleting the "Friendly" part the second the AI source code hits the Internet? Keep in mind that the 4chan community has a similar ethos to LW: namely "anything that can be destroyed by a basement dweller should be".

Comment author: CronoDAS 11 March 2016 08:37:41PM 6 points [-]

The game I'd like to see an AI for is Diplomacy. ;)

Comment author: Algernoq 12 March 2016 09:45:20AM 3 points [-]

Oh no! The AI would make us hate each other before betraying us.

Comment author: Manfred 20 February 2016 06:45:05AM *  1 point [-]

Okay, so to go into more detail:

The naive version I mean goes something like "In the future, the universe will have amplitude spread across a lot of states. But I only exist to care in a few of those states. So it's okay to make decisions that maximize my expected-conditional-on-existing utility." This is the one that's basically evidential decision theory - it makes the mistake (where "mistake" is meant according to what I think are ordinary human norms of good decision-making) of conditioning on something that hasn't actually happened when making decisions. Just like an evidential decision theory agent will happily bribe the newspaper to report good news (because certain newspaper articles are correlated with good outcomes), a naive QI agent will happily pay assassins to kill it if it has a below-average day.

The second version I was thinking of (and I'm probably failing a turing test here) goes something like "But that almost-ordinary calculation of expected value is not what I meant - the amplitude of quantum states shouldn't be interpreted as probability at all. They all exist simultaneously at each time step. This is why I have equal probability - actual probability deriving from uncertainty - of being alive no matter how much amplitude I occupy. Instead, I choose to calculate expected value by some complicated function that merely looks a whole lot like naive quantum immortality, driven by this intuition that I'm still alive so long as the amplitude of that event is nonzero."

Again, there is no counterargument that goes "no, this way of choosing actions is wrong according to the external True Source Of Good Judgment." But it sure as heck seems like quantum amplitudes do have something to do with probability - they show up if you try to encode or predict your observations with small turing machines, for example.

Comment author: Algernoq 21 February 2016 12:48:18AM 2 points [-]

Makes sense.

It all breaks down if my consciousness is divisible. If I can lose a little conscious awareness at a time until nothing is left, then Quantum Immortality doesn't seem to work...I would expect to find myself in a world where my conscious awareness (whatever that is) is increasing.

I wish I could quantify how consciously aware I am.

Comment author: Manfred 19 February 2016 08:15:21PM *  2 points [-]

Remember The Hidden Complexity of Wishes? Would you say that's also an allegory about quantum immortality?

But sure, whatever, death of the author. I'm sure there are plenty of interpretations.

And yes, obviously I think quantum immortality is false. The naive version is basically a failure of evidential decision theory. The sophisticated version many people converge to after some arguing and rationalization fails to match our past observations of quantum probabilities.

Comment author: Algernoq 20 February 2016 03:23:17AM 2 points [-]

Can you say a little more about what specific past observations are not matched by a sophisticated version of Quantum Immortality?

[spoilers] EY's “A Girl Corrupted...?!” new story is an allegorical study of quantum immortality?

5 Algernoq 19 February 2016 11:02AM

If you haven't read "Girl Corrupted by the Internet is the Summoned Hero?!” yet, you should.

Spoilers ahead:

 

 

Continuing...

The Spell summons the hero with the best chance of defeating the Evil Emperor. This sounds like Quantum Immortality...

Specifically: Imagine the set of all possible versions of myself that are alive 50 years in the future, in the year 2066. My conscious observation at that point tends to summon the self most likely to be alive in 2066.

To elaborate: Computing all possible paths forward from the present moment to 2066 results in a HUGE set of possible future-selves that exist in 2066. But, some are more likely than others. For example, there will be a bunch of paths to a high-probability result, where I worked a generic middle-class job for years but don't clearly remember a lot of the individual days. There will also be a few paths where I do low-probability things. Thus, a random choice from that HUGE set will tend to pick a generic (high-probability) future self.

But, my conscious awareness observes one life path, not one discrete moment in the future. Computing all possible paths forward from the present moment to the end of the Universe results in a HUGE x HUGE set of possible life-paths, again with considerable overlap. My consciousness tends to pick a high-probability path.

In the story, a hero with a 100% probability of victory exists, so that hero is summoned. The hero observing their own probability of victory ensures they converge on a 100% probability of victory.

In real life, life paths with infinite survival time exist, so these life paths tend to be chosen. Observing one's own probability of infinite survival ensures convergence on 100% survival probability.

In the story, other characters set up conditions such that a desired outcome was the most likely one, by resolving to let a summoned hero with certain traits win easily.

In real life, an equivalent is the quantum suicide trick: resolving to kill oneself if certain conditions are not met ensures that the life path observed is one where those conditions are met.

In the story, a demon is summoned, and controlled when the demon refuses to fulfill its duty. Control of the demon was guaranteed by 100% probability of victory.

In real life, AI is like a demon, with the power to grant wishes but with perverse and unpredictable consequences that become worse with more powerful demons summoned. But, a guarantee of indefinite survival ensures that this demon will not end my consciousness. There are many ways this could go wrong. But, I desire to create as many copies of my mind as possible, but only in conditions where these copies could have lives at least as good as my own, so assuming I have some power to increase how quickly copies of my mind are created, and assuming I might be a mind-copy created in this way, this suggests that the most likely Universe for me to find myself in (out of the set of all possible Universes) is one in which the AI and I cooperate to create a huge number of long-lived copies of my mind.  

tl;dr: AI Safety is guaranteed by Quantum Immortality. P.S. God's promise to Abraham that his descendants will be "beyond number" is fulfilled.

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