All of Christopher James Hart's Comments + Replies

A few things should be made clear.

  1. Buying in January was almost the best case scenario, it is not a good metric to generalize from.
  2. This is not remotely as safe an investment as buying tech stocks. It is much more all or nothing. Especially people new to this should understand they should not spend more then they are willing to have completely vanish even if they are correct in direction, and stock go up, just they don't go up enough fast enough.
  3. Options can be complicated, and you can losing substantially more than just the initial purchase price if you don'
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-random is a bad baseline because activation space is not isotropic (or some other reason I do not understand) and this is not actually that unexpected or interesting.

 

Isn't this just the answer? To rephrase:

The SAE is only able to represent a subset of the possible directions from the initial space when you force it to compress the space down.

If you take a magnitude from a direction where change matters, and then apply the magnitude to random dimensions most of which the model throws away, it will result in a smaller change.

Grainger is the first thing that came to mind as a legitimate reference that has pricing online.

I don't think you have invalidated any of my points, that the hp of a tesla motor doesn't make any sense to compare with hp ratings of an excavator motor, that high hp electric powerplants are very expensive, that adding VFD's which are not operationally necessary is a large cost and is most often left off in favor of running the motors.

Diesel-electric operate on electric where available, and switch to diesel when they get to unelectrified areas. Many cities are electrified within maybe a 20 mile radius of city center, with farther branches being diesel.

4bhauth
No. Trains that can do that are called electro-diesel locomotives. Not diesel-electric.

Tesla motors would not be rated at a tesla vehicles rated hp for an industrial application, they are not expected to operate at 100% duty cycle.

If you want to look at industrial motors for sale at a gold standard place like Grainger, a 250hp (sticker hp Model 3 equivalent) motor is $30,000 - $40,000 just for the motor, no VFD, no mounting, no installation.

https://www.grainger.com/category/motors/ac-motors/definite-purpose-motors?attrs=HP%7C250&filters=attrs

Another $15,000 - $30,000 for the VFD

https://www.grainger.com/search/motors/motor-drives-speed-co... (read more)

1bhauth
You're using Grainger list prices? Seriously? If you actually dealt with buying stuff for industry, you'd know that their prices are much lower when you have a big account with them, and that there are cheaper options.

While lots of hobbyists use VSDs on their equipment so they can run 3 phase motors off standard US line voltage (I do this for my 1/2hp CNC spindle, 1 1/2hp bandsaw in the past), these are mostly non-certified and small Chinese VSDs, that require programming and knowledge beyond the scope of what even skilled operators are normally capable of, yet alone allowed to do in electrical regulations.

The reality is a certified piece of equipment, professionally installed, can cost in the $500/horsepower range. On even a fairly modest piece of equipment with say 5x... (read more)

1bhauth
I'm sure you can find companies charging that much, but...for example, wind turbines use variable-speed motors, and those are more like $70/hp including the drivers. Electric cars use variable-speed motors, look at how much those motors cost. It's not $500/hp, that's for sure. A Tesla Model 3 doesn't have $140k worth of electric motors in it, does it?

Just FYI for many cases, heavy electric motors you leave running same as a diesel. The inrush on them is massive and is often charged separately as peak 'demand', the costs of which can dwarf the pure kilowatt hour charges of running the motor (the kind which most residential users are used to).

Switching large currents also will wear the components, they have limited a cycle life, so leads to expensive replacement and downtime.

Places I have worked would chew you out if you turned something off that was coming back on within an hour.

Large motors will also likely be 3 phase, which greatly limits locations they can be used.

3bhauth
That used to be true, but these days, electric motors all have variable-speed drives using modern power semiconductors. Anybody still using electric motors like you're describing is running obsolete equipment.

I am trying to make a general statement about models and contexts, and thinking about the consequences of applying the concept to AI.

Another example could be Newtonian versus Relativistic physics. There is a trade off of something like efficiency/simplicity/interpretability versus accuracy/precision/complexity. Both models have contexts in which they are the more valid model to use. If you try to force both models to exist at once, you lose both sets of advantages. You will cause and amplify errors if you try to interchange them arbitrarily.

So we don't combine the two, but instead try to understand when and why we should chose to adopt one model over the other.

Group coordination evolved because it was vital for survival at a time when the group size was not the entire population. There was a margin for error. If some percent of groups took themselves out due to bad models, the entire species wasn't eliminated. A different group that also coordinated eventual filled the empty position.

Since the human group size is now global in many aspects, the damage from a bad model could result in elimination of the species. The expected value functions are changed. The process above can still play out, but there is a very re... (read more)

I definitely understand this perspective and do agree. Less Wrong was not the only target audience. I tried to start in a style that could be easily understood by any reader to the point of them seeing enough value to try to get through the whole thing, while gradually increasing the level of discourse, and reducing the falsifiable arguments. I tried to take a broad approach to introduce the context I am working from, as I have much more to say and needed someplace to try to start building a bridge. I also just wanted to see if anyone cared enough for me t... (read more)

2Seth Herd
That last point is new and interesting to me. By converging the models I assume you mean aligning AGI. What flaw is this reintroducing into the system? Are you saying AGI shouldn't do what people want because people want dumb things?

I agree completely. I am not trying to feed accelerationism or downplay risks, but I am trying to make a few important arguments from the perspective of an 3rd party observer. I wanted to introduce the 'divine move paradox' along side the evolutionary ingrained flawed minds argument. I am trying to frame the situation in a slightly different light, far enough outside the general flow to be interesting, but not so far that it does not tie in. I am certainly not trying to say we just turn over control to the first thing that manipulates us properly.

I think my original title was poorly chosen when this is meant to bring forward ideas. I edited it to remove 'The Case for AGI'