All of Bridgett Kay's Comments + Replies

"Future progress is a part of current human values" of course- the danger lies in the "future" always being just that- the future. One would naturally hope that it wouldn't go this way, but continuously putting off the future because now is always the present is a possible outcome. It can even be a struggle with current models to get them to generate novel ideas, because of a stubbornness not to say anything for which there is not yet evidence. 

Thank you for that criticism- I hadn't necessarily given that point enough thought, and I think I am starting to see where the weaknesses are. 

Yeah- calling myself a failed scifi writer really was half in jest- had some very limited success as an indie writer for a good number of years, and recently need has made me shift direction. Thank you for the encouragement, though!

"If your conclusion is that we don't know how to do value alignment, I and I think most alignment thinkers would agree with you. If the conclusion is that AGI is useless, I don't think it is at all."

Sort of- I worry that it may be practically impossible for current humans to align AGI to the point of usefulness.

"If we had external help that allowed us to focus more on what we truly want—like eliminating premature death from cancer or accidents, or accelerating technological progress for creative and meaningful projects—we’d arrive at a very different futur... (read more)

Does anyone have any generally helpful advice for someone who doesn't really get vibes? Should I just continue to be more timid than normal, or is there a helpful heuristic I can use (aside from the 'don't talk to strangers, don't join MLM's, be wary of things that are too good to be true' stuff that our parents tell us at a young age.)

1991/1992, actually (Harry Potter was born July 1980, and the story takes place the school year after his 11th birthday.)

Seems to me that the only winning move is not to play. 

This might be our third, fourth fifth... nth chance. 

Thank you.

This is legitimate- the definition of weirdness was kept open-ended. I intended weirdness to be any behavior that is divergent from what most in a certain group considers to be the status quo, but even within a group, each member may have a different definition of what weird behavior is, and a consensus will be difficult to pin down. 

I would consider rudeness to be weird behavior under this definition. It is a social behavior that comes with the cost of disrupting social cohesion. What is considered rude, vs. frank and straightforward, will vary from ... (read more)

We don't know how to align asteroids' trajectories, so it's important to use smaller asteroids to align larger ones- like a very large game of amateur billiards. 

I love this! But I find myself a little disappointed there's not a musical rendition of the "I have been a good bing" dialogue.

That seems fairly consistent with what happened to me. I did not experience my entire life in the dream- just the swim meet and the aftermath, and my memories were things I just summoned in the moment, like just coming up with small pieces of a story in real time. The thing that disturbed me the most wasn't living another life- though that was disturbing enough- but the fact that a character in the dream knew a truth that "I" did not. 

I have a similar trick I use with pirouettes- if I can turn and turn without stopping, then it is a dream. Of course, in this dream, I was not a dancer and had never danced, so I didn't even think of it. 

Lately I've been appreciating, more and more, something I'm starting to call "Meta-Alignment." Like, with everything that touches AI, we have to make sure that thing is aligned just enough to where it won't mess up or "misalign" the alignment project. For example, we need to be careful about the discourse surrounding alignment, because we might give the wrong idea to people who will vote on policy or work on AI/AI adjacent fields themselves. Or policy needs to be carefully aligned, so it doesn't create misaligned incentives that mess up the alignment project; the same goes for policies in companies that work with AI. This is probably a statement of the obvious, but it is really a daunting prospect the more I think about it. 

I was just wondering, on the subject of research debt, if there was any sort of system so that people could "adopt" the posts of others. Like say, if someone posts an interesting idea that they don't have the  time to polish or expand upon, they could post is somewhere for people who can. 

Yeah- the experience really shook me. I'm prone to fairly vivid and interesting dreams, but this was definitely the strangest. 

But this was the final trick, for as soon as Maxwell accepted the two million dollars, the simulation ended.

How would you compare this technique to a more standard mindfulness practice?

Well, I'm setting up a SETI style project looking for extra-temporal info... in other words looking for time travelers. I did an initial set of experiments which were poorly planned out and riddled with paradox, but I've redesigned the experiments and will be starting them soon.

I see. Just running with the premise as it stood.

Do you think it is more likely that r&d will simply cease rather than there being fewer and fewer returns from r&d over time, causing companies to put more money into it to stay competitive? I wonder if the situation might not cause the prices to actually go up, like with medication.

I've been lurking for a while but haven't posted very much. I'm a writer who also enjoys doing weird experiments in my spare time. Hi there :)

I'm also partial to the low hanging fruit explanation. Unfortunately, it seems to me we can really only examine progress on already established fields. Much harder to tell if there is much left to discover outside of established fields- the opportunities to make big discoveries that establish whole new fields of study. This is where the undiscovered, low hanging fruit would be, i think.

This is probably good general advice, but it's a different matter when there is evidence that points to being an actual imposter. For example, when I write novels that do not sell, or blog posts that get downvoted to oblivion, it is difficult to get honest feedback as to how I might improve my writing. The feedback I get is almost always positive, but reviews are self-selected because people rarely are motivated to review something unless they especially like it. Plus, politeness prohibits people from being harsh when you ask for feedback. For these reas

There's one person who always has the authority to say you can't try-yourself. Some people have a harder time than others when it comes to ignoring the discouragement of Pat and Maude.