Google fires 28 employees working on cloud and AI services for doing a ten hour sit in where they occupied their boss’s office until the police were eventually involved. And yes, if what you do at work is spend your time blockading your boss’s office until your policy demands are met, it seems like you are going to get fired?

In a company other than Google, I would say: yes, obviously.

But remember, when James Damore wrote his document, and as a reaction other people stopped doing their work in protest, it was he who was fired, not them. How were they supposed to know that this time it will be different?

Besides math and programming, what are your other skills and interests?

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I have an idea of a puzzle game, not sure if it would be good or bad, I haven't done even a prototype. So if anyone is interested, feel free to try... I hope I can explain it sufficiently clearly in words...

The game plan is divided into squares; I imagine a typical level to be between 10x10 and 30x30 squares large. Each square is either empty, or contains an immovable wall, or contains a movable block. The game consists of moving the blocks. Each move = you click a specific block, and try dragging it in one of the 4 directions, and either it is possible or not.

A block cannot move into a wall. A block can push another block. A block does not pull another block. For example, if there are 3 blocks in a horizontal line, and you click the middle one and try dragging it to the left, two blocks will move and the third one (the one on the right) will stay there. So far, it should be completely obvious, like what you would happen if you moved some actual objects.

In addition, each side of a block (or a wall) may be empty, or may contain a colored "magnet" (or perhaps a "lock" is a better metaphor). These add the following constraints for the movement of blocks:

• Magnets of different colors can never touch each other. If one block has a green magnet on the right side, and another has a blue magnet on the left side, you cannot put them next to each other so that the magnets would touch. (If you try to do that, the block refuses to move. Graphically, I imagine that it would move like half the way, and then you would get a visual indicator where is the problem, and when you stop dragging, it will return to its original place.) Though it is okay if the blocks touch on their other sides, where they don't have magnets.
• Magnets of the same color cannot be connected or disconnected by a move in a perpendicular direction. If one block has a green magnet on the right side, and another has a green magnet on the left side, if you move them next to each other, then when you try moving one of them up or down, it drags the other block along with it. Either both blocks move (in a direction perpendicular to their magnetic connection) or neither does. In a direction parallel to the magnetic connection, either one block pushes the other, or they disconnect if you pull them apart (i.e. the magnets do nothing when moving in a parallel direction).
• A magnet can touch a side without a magnet, doing so has no effect as if the magnet is not there.

Or, to describe it more like a programmer:

1. You choose a block and a direction to move. Now we create a set of "blocks that will move one step in given direction" like this: At first, the set contains the selected block. For each block in the set, a block next to it in the selected direction is also added to the set (pushed by the previous block). For each block in the set, a block next to it in a perpendicular direction is also added to the set if they are connected by magnets of the same color. We keep applying these two rules until we can add no more blocks to the set.
2. Now we check what would happen if blocks in the set moved one step in given direction, and all other blocks stayed at their place. If any block would move into a wall, the entire move is cancelled. (A block cannot move into another block, because by the set creation algorithm, that other block would also be in the set, and thus it would also move.) If two blocks -- one that moved, and one that didn't move -- would end up next to each other so that their magnets would touch each other (regardless of their colors), the entire move is cancelled. In both cases, the place that causes the problem is visually indicated to the player. (That is, even if you already know that the move is cancelled, keep checking which other places you also need to highlight. Then move all blocks in the set a few pixels in a given direction, so the player sees which blocks would be pushed along.)
3. If there is no problem, the blocks in the set all simultaneously move one step the given direction.

I think that these rules are time-reversible; whatever move you make, you can revert it by one or more moves. This is a desirable property, because it means you can never get stuck in the game. (It also means you can automatically generate levels by generating a solution and then making a few hundred random moves.)

A magnet can also be on the side of a wall. (The wall is basically a block that cannot be moved.)

The puzzle is solved when each magnet is connected to a magnet of the same color.

For bonus points, include a visual editor, and maybe an export/import of levels to a text file.

Oh, I hope so! But I would like to get the perspective of people outside our bubble.

If EA has a bad image, we are not the right people to speculate why. And if we don't know why, then we cannot fix it. Even if Paul Christiano can convince people that he is okay, it would be better if he didn't have to do this the next time. Maybe next time he (or some other person associated with EA) won't even get a chance to talk in person to people who oppose EA for some reason.

My first guess for bullying was: bullies typical choose a victim who has lower status than them. Of course the person with lower status gets punished more strictly for breaking the rules.

But the explanation "bullies are free to optimize for circumstances that make them less likely to get punished, and have more experience doing so" also makes a lot of sense.

I never want to hear anyone complaining about the use of the term “woke” again

Just because someone else uses the word, doesn't make it okay for you to use the word. 😛

They follow this motto: [every one should feel safe]

Except for the Israelis, I suppose...

If in extreme situations the ethical ideas fall apart, it might make sense to add an extra rule to stay away from the extreme situations. Like maybe not forever, but to proceed sufficiently slowly so that we have time to reflect on how we feel about that.

I like the rest of the article, but...

Cold calls. It's ok if you have a terrible response rate.

It's ok for you, but you generate negative externality as a side effect (waste other people's time and attention).

Do you think a logarithmic scale makes more sense than a linear scale?

Assuming that this article is a reaction to "Torture vs. Dust Specks", the hypothetical number of people suffering from dust specks was specified as 3^^^3, which in practice is an unimaginably large number. Big numbers such as "the number of particles in the entire known universe" are not sufficient even to describe its number of digits. Therefore, using a logarithmic scale changes nothing.

Logarithmic scale with a hard cap is an inelegant solution, comparable to a linear scale with a hard cap.

What you probably want instead is some formula like in the theory of relativity, where the speed of a rocket approaches but never reaches a certain constant c. For example, you might claim that if a badness of any specific thing is X, then the badness of this thing happening even to a practically infinite number of people is still only approaching some finite value C*X. (Not sure if C is constant across different kinds of suffering.)

That seems like a nice justification for scope insensitivity. We are not insensitive, it's just that saving 2,000 birds or saving 200,000 birds really has approximately the same moral value!

The problem with this justification is what qualifies as the "same kind of suffering". Suppose that infinite people getting a dust speck in their eyes aggregates into 1000 units of badness. If instead, an infinite number people get a dust speck in their left eyes, and an infinite number of different people get a dust speck in their right eyes, does this aggregate into 1000 or 2000 units of badness, and why? What about dusk specks vs sand specks?

Or is this supposed to aggregate over different kinds of suffering? So even an almost infinite number of people, each one mildly discomforted in a unique way, are a less bad outcome than one person suffering horribly?

...shortly, it is not enough to say "in this specific scenario, I would define the proper way to calculate utility this way", you should provide a complete theory, and then see how well it works in other scenarios.

(Also, you need to consider practically infinitely small numbers of people -- that is, people suffering certain fate with a microscopically tiny probability.)

Wow, this seems like an interesting topic to explore.

The people threatening to resign (are there any? without specific information, this could possibly be entirely made up), could be useful to ask them if they have any objections against Paul Christiano, or just EA in general, and if it is the latter, what sources they got their information from, and perhaps what could possibly change their minds.

I'm working on this as a full blogpost but figured I would start getting pieces of it out here for now.

Looking forward to specific examples, pretty please.

I would expect the standards to be high while the practice is new and very controversial and the cases are few... and then gradually the process gets more streamlined.

Protests against assisted suicide are easy to coordinate; protests again removing 1% of the bureaucracy around it are not.

Do we really need 7 witnesses, or is 6 enough? It is okay if the doctor performing the suicide is also one of the witnesses? And his assistant is another one? How clearly must the person speak on the video? What if they can't speak at all, is it fair to deny someone the "basic human right" of assisted suicide just because their ability to speak is impaired? What if taking someone to the next room would be logistically too difficult, e.g. because they are connected to some kind of life support? ... Twenty years later, the doctor checks a box saying "the assisted suicide was done according to the law" on the form, signs it, and that's it.