I don't think it's an active waste of time to explore the research that can be done with things like AIXI models. I do, however, think that, for instance, flaws of AIXI-like models should be taken as flaws of AIXI-like models, rather than generalized to all possible AI designs.

So for example, some people (on this site and elsewhere) have said we shouldn't presume that a real AGI or real FAI will necessarily use VNM utility theory to make decisions. For various reasons, I think that exploring that idea-space is a good idea, in that relaxing the VNM utility and rationality assumptions can both take us closer to how real, actually-existing minds work, and to how we normatively want an artificial agent to behave.

Sometimes toy models are helpful and some times they are distractions that lead nowhere or embody a mistaken preconception. I see you as claiming these models are distractions, not that no model is possible. Accurate?

I very much favor bottom-up modelling based on real evidence rather than mathematical models that come out looking neat by imposing our preconceptions on the problem a priori.

The classes U and F above, should something like that ever come to pass, need not be AIXI-like (nor need they involve utility functions).

Right. Which is precisely why I don't like when we attempt to do FAI research under the assumption of AIXI-like-ness.

That sounds plausible, but how do you start to reason about such models of computation if they haven't even been properly defined yet?

Oh yes, it sounds like I did misunderstand you. I thought you were saying you didn't understand how such a thing could happen in principle, not that you were skeptical of the currently popular models. The classes U and F above, should something like that ever come to pass, need not be AIXI-like (nor need they involve utility functions).

I think I'm hearing that you're very skeptical about the validity of current toy mathematical models. I think it's common for people to motte and bailey between the mathematics and the phenomena they're hoping to model, and it's an easy mistake for most people to make. In a good discussion, you should separate out the "math wank" (which I like to just call math) from the transfer of that wank to reality that you hope to model.

Sometimes toy models are helpful and some times they are distractions that lead nowhere or embody a mistaken preconception. I see you as claiming these models are distractions, not that no model is possible. Accurate?

Then, once you actually construct an arbitrary GAI, you already know how to transform it into an FAI.

Frankly, I don't trust this claim for a second, because important components of the Friendliness problem are being completely shunted aside. For one thing, in order for this to even start making sense, you have to be able to specify a computable utility function for the AGI agent in the first place. The current models being used for this "mathematical" research don't have any such thing, ie: AIXI specifies reward as a real-valued percept rather than a function over its world-model.

The problem is not the need for large amounts of computing power (ie: the problem is not specifying the right behavior and then "scaling it down" or "approximating" a "tractable example from the class"). The problem is not being able to specify what the agent values in detail. No amount of math wank about "approximation" and "candidate class of formal models U" is going to solve the basic problem of having to change the structure away from AIXI in the first place.

I really ought to apologize for use of the term "math wank", but this really is the exact opposite approach to how one constructs correct programs. What you don't do to produce a correct computer program, knowing its specification, is try to specify a procedure that will, given an incomplete infinity of time, somehow transform an arbitrary program from some class of programs into the one you want. What you do is write the single exact program you want, correct-by-construction, and prove formally (model checking, dependent types, whatever you please) that it exactly obeys its specification.

If you are wondering where the specification for an FAI comes from, well, that's precisely the primary research problem to solve! But it won't get solved by trying to write a function that takes as input an arbitrary instance or approximation of AIXI and returns that same instance of AIXI "transformed" to use a Friendly utility function.

I honestly don't understand how on Earth it would even be possible to understand FAI without understanding AGI on a general level. On some level, what you need isn't a team of Sufficiently Advanced Geniuses who can figure out Friendliness while simultaneously minimizing their own understanding of AGI, but old-fashioned cooperation among the teams who are likely to become able to build AGI, with the shared goal of not building any agent that would defy its creators' intentions.

(You can note that the creators' intentions might be, so to speak, "evil", but an agent that faithfully follows the "evil" intentions of an "evil" sort of human operator is already far Friendlier in kind than a paperclip maximizer -- it was just given the wrong operator.)

Reading comments like this make me feel far better about my relative lack of social life. The things people who have it must go through... I think would rather be confined to my family (thankfully I am married to an intelligent woman) than to have to bite my tongue and not tell idiots that they are idi... well, at least telling them that they are wrong.

Is it a useful model that the enjoyment of having larger social circles comes at the price of frequent tongue-biting and being polite when you feel like doing a dramatic facepalm?

Maybe the other person is a jerk and is on an obnoxious power trip at your expense. If you don't get suspicious and (internally) angry you're just setting yourself up as a victim.

Generic advice doesn't apply everywhere. A default "nod and slowly back away" response isn't bad but is not always useful.

Here is my favorite method -

Situation: Someone says something totally cuckoo crazy but they are someone I have to cooperate with in order to complete a task or who I have to maintain a good social relationship because we share friends or because they are otherwise cool. Also, the person is not convincible (I hang with hippies, this happens a lot).

Solution: a conspiratory shrug followed by "ehh... who can say, really" or "eh... the world is a strange place" or, if the statement is totally super crazy, just "ehh..."

Examples:

"I switched to a gluten free diet and I think my energy centers really cleared up!" shrug "ehh... the world is a strange place"

"Why do people say its strange that I named my baby Glutenball? They just don't understand how gluten symbolizes the glue that holds us all together!" shrug "ehh... who can say really?"

"9/11 was a conspiracy by the gluten lobby!" shrug "ehh..."

So it's just unrolling the basic "don't be an asshole, be polite instead" advice?