First, some examples. In my beginning programming classes, I tell students (and show them): write comments first, before coding. Some won't. I tell them: write the algorithm first. I prove this will save them time. There's a whole chapter on why and how to do this. Many won't. (Except twice,...
I saw some time ago Carl Sagan asked schoolchildren for proofs that the earth is round. I can no longer find it, but they gave him sound, simple answers. One was watching a ship seem to sink below the horizon as it grows distant. One was photos of Earth from...
I assume this is meant to illustrate AI risk. If so, yes, I'm terrified.
Terms I don't know: inferential gaps, general intelligence factor g, object-level thing, opinion-structure. There are other terms I can figure but I have to stop a moment: medical grade mental differences, baseline assumptions. I think that's most of it.
At the risk of going too far, I'll paraphrase one section with hopes that it'll say the same thing and be more accessible. (Since my day job is teaching college freshmen, I think about clarity a lot!)
--
"Can't I just assume my interlocutor is intelligent?"
No.
People have different basic assumptions. People have different intuitions that generated those assumptions. This community in particular attracts people with very unbalanced skills (great at reasoning, not always great at communicating).... (read more)
Actually, I wonder if we might try something more formal. How about if we get a principle that if a poster sees a comment saying "what's that term?" the poster edits the post to define it where it's used?
Apparently clarity is hard. Because although I agree that it's essential to communicate clearly, it took significant wrapping my head around it to digest this post, to identify its thrust. I thought I had it eventually, but looking at comments it seems I wasn't the only one not sure.
I am not saying this to be snarky. I find this to be one of the clearer posts on LessWrong; I am usually lost in jargon I don't know. (Inferential gaps? General intelligence factor g?) But despite its relative clarity, it's still a slog.
I still admire the effort, and hope everyone will listen.
Conservatives are already suspicious of AI, based on ChatGPT3's political bias. AI skeptics shd target the left (which has less political reason to be suspicious) and not target the right (because if the succeed, the left will reject AI skepticism as a right-wing delusion).
(IDK what most people think abt just abt anything, so I'll content myself with many aren't ready to accept.)
Secularism is unstable. Partly because it gets its values from the religion it abandoned, so that the values no longer have foundation, but also empirically because it stops people from reproducing at replacement rate.
Overpopulation is at worst a temporary problem now; the tide has turned.
Identifying someone with lots of letters after his name and accepting his opinions is not following the science, but the opposite. Science takes no one's word, but uses data.
If A says B thinks something and B says, No, I think that's crazy, B is right. That is, mind reading isnt a thing.
What matters about the 2020 US election isnt Trump. It's whether we know how to get away with fraud in future elections and whether we've taken steps to prevent it. Uh-oh.
Rage at people on the other team who want to join yours is a baaaad idea.
I speak as someone who teaches college freshmen.
On the one hand, I see AI writers as a disaster for classes involving writing. I tried ChatGP3 last night and gave it an assignment like one I might assign in a general studies class; it involved two dead philosophers. I would definitely have given the paper an A. It was partly wrong, but the writing was perfect and the conclusion correct and well argued.
This isn't like Grammarly, where you write and the computer suggests ways to write better. I didn't write my paper; I wrote a query. Crafting the query took me almost no time to learn, and here it is: cut-and-paste the assignment... (read more)
I'd guess it's overabundance of working-class workers relative to the need. But recently I'm seeing claims that the elite are overabundant: for example, there aren't enough elite slots for the next generation, so Harvard's acceptance rate has gone from 30-odd% to around 1%; and would-be middle-class young people are having to stay with mom and dad to save on rent while working long hours. How can there be an oversupply of all different classes of workers? If it's that automation makes us all way too efficient, shouldn't that make us rich and leisured rather than overworked and desperate?
There is also a tremendous amount of make-work.
My uni has 2 new layers of management between professor and president (was 2, now it's 4) since 1998. Recently we noticed a scary budget shortfall. They decided to reorganize. After reorgnization...kept those extra 2 layers.
My doc's office joined a big corporation. It was ACA (Obamacare). They would have had to hire another clerical worker to handle the extra paperwork.
This blog post is about something else, but buried in it is the number of clergy for various US denominations. Whether the denomination is growing or shrinking, the administrators' numbers explode. https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/5910/
Many of us have produced dissertations or technical papers that will likely never be used... (read more)
First, some examples.
In my beginning programming classes, I tell students (and show them): write comments first, before coding. Some won't. I tell them: write the algorithm first. I prove this will save them time. There's a whole chapter on why and how to do this. Many won't. (Except twice, they really got it. IDK why.) As time goes by -- I hope! -- they learn that this is the way to go. How can I help them hear at the start?
I was with my 6-ish nephew, and he wanted to show me a computer game. Computer wouldn't start. He called in his mom for help. She said, Sure, I'll try, but I... (read 330 more words →)
I saw some time ago Carl Sagan asked schoolchildren for proofs that the earth is round. I can no longer find it, but they gave him sound, simple answers. One was watching a ship seem to sink below the horizon as it grows distant. One was photos of Earth from space. One, I believe, was seeing how the sun may reach the bottom of a well in the tropics, but not further north.
I'm trying to find similar answers related to the age of the universe. I'll operationally define "old" as "older than human history." So far:
* We know by parallax distances to various stars within 300 l y, and can tell from... (read 203 more words →)
Can't do it in this time frame, but maybe in another year...glad to see someone is making this effort.