I personally love the idea of having a highly rational partner to bounce ideas off, and I think LLMs have high utility in this regard, I use them to challenge my knowledge and fill in gaps, unweave confusion, check my biases.
However, what I've heard about how others are using chat, and how I've seen kids use it, is much more as a cognitive off-loader, which has large consequences for learning, because "cognitive load" is how we learn. I've heard many adults say "It's a great way to get a piece of writing going", or "to make something more concise", these a...
Developing an idea about complexity and emergence which looks at the stages of an emergent cycle—that being how a substrate gives rise to an emergent phenomenon, which reaches equilibrium providing the substrate for a the next phenomenon. The way I see it, it goes something like this:
quantum randomness > is predictable at a certain scale > reaches equilibrium > becomes base + randomness (as a byproduct)
or this
substrate + free energy > patterns emerge (disturbances in the uniformity of the free energy) > equilibrium reached > substrate + f...
That (deliberate grieving) was also an interesting read, yes, exactly.
I see, I think you're right not to change it—it's just provocative enough to be catchy.
Wow, that was quick. I mean, rather than scaffolding work that seems unproductive but is actually necessary, most creative time (for me at least) is wasted in resisting change (my number 3 point was about trying changes even if you don't immediately agree with them).
Thanks for this, nice writing.
The idea of 'thinking it faster' is provocative, because it seems to be over-optimising for speed rather than other values, where as the way you're implementing it is by generating more meaningful or efficient decisions which are underpinned by a meta-analysis of your process—which is actually about increasing the quality of your decision-making.
I think it's worthwhile seeing where we're wasting time. But often I find wasted time isn't what you'd expect it to be. As someone who also works in the creative industry, criticism is...
Thanks Hastings,
I think at that time you could reason much better if you could recognize that the separation between left and right was not natural.
I think you're saying it was easier in the past to see unorthodox or contradictory views within parties because the wings were more clearly delineated. I'd agree, it was a divided time, but a less chaotic divided time.
The effective left right split is mono-factor: you are right exactly in proportion to your personal loyalty to one Donald J. Trump
Absolutely, it's also bizarre regarding his tariff policy which is...
Thanks Mr Frege for clarifying your points. As I have mentioned (in other comments) I've conceded that I probably should have contextualised my own abandonment of both-sidesism before taking a partisan approach that makes my post appear more biased than it actually is, and probably colours the way it is read.
advocating that we should not consider the other side of the story
Okay, I definitely should have clarified that this is not my intention at all. Both-sidesism, as I'm referring to it, is creating a false equivalence between two issues and giving them e...
Hi notfnofn, thanks again for the well considered comment, and for responding to my edited response. I think you've made good points which have revealed clarifications I could have made within the post.
Okay Trump is president now. Hoping that things go well regardless.
Me too. And we'll see if the right-wing and online media's concern that Harris is an equal threat to democracy over the next couple of months. Because if she is an equal threat we shouldn't expect to see a peaceful transfer of power, like when Trump lost. Although, she has already graciously ...
This was a fascinating, original idea as usual. I loved the notion of a brilliant, condescending sort of robot capable of doing a task perfectly who chooses (in order to demonstrate its own artistry) to predict and act out how we would get it wrong.
It did make me wonder though, whether when we reframe something like this for GPTs it's also important to apply the reframing to our own human intelligence to determine if the claim is distinct; in this case asking the question "are we imitators, simulators or predictors?". It might be possible to make the case ...
Hi Seth,
I share your concern that AGI comes with the potential for a unilateral first strike capability that, at present, no nuclear power has (which is vital to the maintenance of MAD), though I think, in game theoretical terms, this becomes more difficult the more self-interested (in survival) players there are. Like in open-source software, there is a level of protection against malicious code because bad players are outnumbered, even if they try to hide their code, there are many others who can find it. But I appreciate that 100s of coders finding mali...
Sorry, you’re right, I did misread that—I've edited my response, correcting for my mistake.
Thanks for your comment, the post itself is meant to challenge the reader to question what is really bias, and what is actually an even-handed view with apparent bias, due to the shifted centre. But I certainly take your point, beginning in a clearly partisan manner might not have been the best approach before putting it in context.
I do think there are defences that can be made of the points you raise.
You took one of the tamest aspects of the radical left here
I agree I have taken a tame aspect of the radical left, because there are only tame aspects availa...
I agree, it seems as though the incentives aren't aligned that way, so it ends up incumbent upon the audience to distill nuance out of binary messaging, and to recognise the value of those who do present unique perspectives.
This made me think about how this will come about, whether we we have multiple discrete systems for different functions; language, image recognition, physical balance, executive functions etc working interdependently, communicating through compressed-bandwidth conduits, or whether at some point we can/need-to literally chuck all the raw data from all the systems into one learning system, and let that sort it out (likely creating its own virtual semi-independent systems).
The nuclear MAD standoff with nonproliferation agreements is fairly similar to the scenario I've described. We've survived that so far- but with only nine participants to date.
I wonder if there's a clue in this. When you say "only" nine participants it suggests that more would introduce more risk, but that's not what we've seen with MAD. The greater the number becomes, the bigger the deterrent gets. If, for a minute we forgo alliances, there is a natural alliance of "everyone else" at play when it comes to an aggressor. Military aggression is, after ...
Good point, I guess all-sidesism would be more desirable, this would take the form of panels representing different experts, opinions or demographics. Some issues, like US politics do end up necessarily polarised though, given there are only two options, even if you begin with a panel—they did start with an anti-vax candidate too with RFK Jr (with the Ds and even the Rs being arguably pro-vax), but political expediency results in his being subsumed into the binary.
Thanks Seth, yes, I think we're pretty aligned on this topic. Which gives me some more confidence, given you actually have relevant education and experience in this area.
I'm not sure it's fully satisfying. I'm afraid someone who's really bothered by determinism and their lack of "free will" wouldn't find this comforting at all
I absolutely agree, which is why I followed this section up with the caveat
Now, I'll admit this is not very satisfying, in terms of understanding how our intuitions relate to physical reality
The reason for including this was because i...
This seems to be discounting the consequentialist value of short term pleasure seeking. Doing something because you enjoy the process has immediate positive consequences. Doing something because it is enriching for your life has both positive short term and long term consequences.
To discount short term pleasures as hedonism (as some might) is to miss the point of consequentialism (well of Utilitarianism at least), which is to increase well-being (which can be either short or long term). Well-being can only be measured (ultimately) in terms of pleasure and pain.
Though I agree consequentialism is necessarily incomplete as we don't have perfect predictive powers.
Brilliant, thanks.
Thanks Cubefox, very interesting ideas, I like the idea of generalising a coalition so that it can be treated as a player, that seems to make a lot of practical sense, I'll look into Jeffrey to try and get my head around that.
Nice observation. I'm certainly not meaning to advocate for Shapley value—this was largely an attempt to adjust my negative attitude about Shapley value's flaws, and the attempt was not very successful, but I thought it would be useful to others struggling to understand it, as I was.
I can imagine a way to address the probability issue you raise could be to create probabilistic value entries, where, let's say we add the participants in the ratio they exist in reality, so pretending there are twice as many nurses as doctors, you could fill out values for a 3...
Thanks Austin, yes—the weeks I've spent trying to really understand why Shapley uses such a complicated method to calculate the possible coalitions, has left me feeling that it is actually prohibitively cumbersome for most applications. It has been popular in machine learning algorithms, but faces the problem that it is computationally expensive.
I created a comparison calculator to show Shapley next to my own method that simply weights by dividing all the explicit marginal values by the total of all the explicit marginal values and multiplying that by the ...
What I'm meaning to say is that if you naively believe that "you" (as in someone's sense of self—a result of their genes, experiences and reflections) have no control over yourself, you might feel a lot more relaxed about past mistakes, or future ones since you have a ready excuse, resulting in lazy decision-making (decision-making involving less effort), of course you'll probably still satisfy the bare necessities for survival—although some of the early existentialists sound like they would barely bother with this.
Of course those same existentialists did write long, ground-breaking books that no doubt required significant cognitive effort, so "shrugs".
Part of the answer is to note that mixtures of indeterminism and determinism are possible, so that libertarian free will is not just pure randomness, where any action is equally likely.
This is really interesting, because I agree with this, but also agree with what Seth's saying. I think this disagreement might actually be largely a semantic one. As such, I'm going to (try to) avoid using the terms 'libertarian' or 'compatibilist' free will. First of all I agree with the use of "indeterminism" to mean non-uniform randomness. I agree that there is a way that...
I am yet to find a statement by Popper that I disagree with.
I think Seth is not so much contradicting you here but using a deterministic definition of "self" as that which we are referring to as a particular categorisation of the deterministic process, the one experienced as "making decisions", and importantly "deliberating over decisions". Whether we are determined or not, the effort one puts into their choices is not wasted, it is data-processing that produces better outcomes in general.
One might be determined to throw in the towel on cognitive effort if they were to take a particular interpretation of determinis...
Very well said, I have expressed this exact sentiment more clumsily many times. I concur.
In the absence of AI we can already pass through this phase of realisation/acceptance (the nausea of the realisation of being an object)
Clearly—Sartre was going through it in the early 20th century. I think, while I've never had much trouble with squaring my existence with materialism, I do feel like this period is giving me somewhat of a relapse, and as you say, this is not really within my control.
This feels like the intersection of Analytic and Continental Philosophy
Exactly, I think I was having a continental moment, please do forgive me, we can now ret...
Well that is (commendably) the most positive interpretation of the pet hypothesis I've heard. When we think about it, we're really half way there already. By many measures, many of us are living in what anyone in the past would call Utopia, and are very much cared for by many over-arching systems, the market, the government, the internet. I've also never been one to complain "Oh, but what will I do with all my spare time if I don't have to work?"
Perhaps my daughter will have time to reach goals she actually wants to achieve rather than those of necessity. I appreciate your thoughts.
Fair point. From the perspective of one who sees significant value in earning a living and providing goods and services, how are you feeling about the prospects of many marketable skills being mastered by AI? Do we need to reevaluate the value of jobs?
By pointing to a situation where people already don't feel they are contributing much, it seems like Seth is saying that we're not losing much through this rise of AI. But your objection suggests to me you might think that we are losing something significant?
Thanks Seth, I really appreciate what you've said here—it's good to be reminded that it's not necessary to have your kids change the world, and that caring for each other and expressing themselves contributes positively to the whole.
I'm less worried actually about paths my daughter might take, she's very bright and creative and I'm sure she'll do fine, I guess I don't want her to shy away from things just because someone or something else can do it better. I was mainly posting because I felt like that feeling of nausea might be affecting others who keep ab...
Thanks for your comment. In workshopping this post, I definitely need to work on clarity :) I certainly wasn't meaning to refer to life-extension—I'm meaning the state of the world as it is, where we (most of us at least) don't find it acceptable to let people die of starvation from poverty (as evolution would have us do).
I'll add couple of edits now just to clarify that, as you're not the first person that wasn't clear to.
I would genuinely like to understand what you mean, but it’s not clear to me a present. You are allowed to read the entire post.
A starting point to understanding your point of view would be if you could please, in good faith, answer the question I asked in the previous comment. Do you believe that we should let poor people die?
Thanks for your points npostavs
the real-world smartphone market is surely much closer to oligopoly than perfect competition
This is essentially my point, the government actually have to take measures to break up oligopolies, because oligopolies they are beneficial to companies for maximising profits by charging as much as possible for the least improvement (cost).
How sure are you that this isn't rather the costs of lack of competition?
The costs we've been discussing are externalities like environmental degradation and economic inequality. Competition has be...
The article is about people living in poverty who fail to succeed in an open economic competition (the Covid point was a side point that had "shaken my faith").
I proposed that if you think we should let these people die, then you may as well stop reading. Do you think we should let poor people die? Or did I not phrase that clearly enough?
Ha! Love the meme. Thanks so much for your comment, what a compliment to have "unlocked something" in someone's brain! I absolutely hear you on the addiction issue, that's an interesting take to stack the measures—glad that's working for you.
Thanks Viliam,
I think that's a fair interpretation, if you are restricted in your resources, stick to quantifiable outcomes—a stoic dichotomy of control approach. The article is however about how to solve coordination problems, rather than how to choose appropriate problems for your capacity, because there are some unavoidable coordination problems we face as a civilisation..
The original home of this post, nonzerosum.games is a world-help site as opposed to a self-help site. So, it is focused on these wider, unavoidable social issues. Although individuals ...
I am guilty of both offering opt-ins and fake exits, and also being one of those people that don't want to rock the boat by taking an opt-in or a fake exit. Thanks for this article, as it's highlighted a double standard in me. I knew already that I have a tendency towards cognitive unloading, but this gives very clear examples of situations I might want to have a pre-prepared position for that's not contradictory.
I don't mean to assert that one effect is bigger than the other, more that together they create a vicious cycle. No one disputes that bad decisions can lead to poverty, that's common sense, or that other factors influence it, but if poverty itself is a multiplier it stands to reason that that needs to be addressed as part of any potential solution. The next post (dropping Saturday) is about how, in such coordination problems, multiple factors must align in order for any one solution to be effective.
Oh, sorry, that was largely boiler-plate, while this post did have some hover-over info which didn't translate to LW (which was actually kind of important, as it provided some disclaimers and caveats to points made) it's probably not what you'd call a "full experience". Some other posts on the site have simulations.
Though I do think the overall aesthetic of the posts on the site is subtly important for the tone of my writing (generally a not too serious tone).
I'd be interested in reading up on the replication problems with priming if you have any links. I wasn't on guard for this sort of research, so it seemed plausible to me. All of this goes against our general intuitions that people need to feel their poverty to get motivated for working, so I'm more likely to accept scientific research than assume it's wrong and that my intuitions are correct.
Wait, are you trying to tell me that drug addiction and mental illness contribute to poverty? That seems like a stretch... (jokes)
I feel like that's is a given, the factors that perpetuate poverty are manifold. The article focuses on this finding because it reveals a counter-intuitive and therefore easily overlooked contributory factor (and a significant one at that).
I didn't mean at all to suggest that this finding was the only contributory factor, or that it could be solved with any one solution (which is why the title of the last section reads "a" solution, not "the" solution).
Thanks for reading and responding :)
I think the idea is really interesting. As someone who spent 5 years creating student video resources, I appreciate the impact they can have, and I have at times tried to convince my father—a life-long maths teacher to collaborate with me on replicating his course... but the fool didn't take me up on the offer.
the cost of showing it to every student in the country is approximately zero
I feel like the cost-effectiveness argument is valid but might run into issues. To begin with, as you have in one of your comments pointed out, video resources with a teacher...
Hey, again good points.
But I have recognized sparks of true understanding in one-shot AI works.
I absolutely agree here, this is what I was referring to when I wrote...
I think we can appreciate the beauty of connecting with humanity as a whole, knowing that it is the big data of humanity that has informed AI art - I suspect this is what we find so magical about it.
I suspect that AI has an appeal not just because of its fantastic rendering capacity but also the fact that it is synthesising works not just from a prompt but from a vast library of shared human ...
Okay, so I think I get you now, in the imbalanced game, if the payoff is 100 or 1 as in "Zero Sum" is a misnomer, a rational player will still make the same decision, regardless of the imbalance with the other player, given the resulting preference ordering.
However while this imbalance makes no difference to the players' decisions, it does make a difference to the total payoff, making it non-zero-sum. I'm having difficulty understanding why values such as happiness or resources cannot be substituted for utility—surely at some point this must happen if game...
I’m not sure how the game is the same when you add a constant. The game as proposed in the example is clearly different. I can see that multiplication makes no difference, and as such doesn’t make the sum non-constant. I don’t see how asymmetrically changing the parameters is a “mere change in notation”.
By the way, I’m sure you’re entirely correct about this, I just simply don’t see how there is a problem with using the concept of zero-sum understood as constant-sum.
Hi Vladimir, thanks for your input, it has been fascinating going down the rabbit hole of nuance regarding the term "zero-sum".
I agree that the term is more accurately denoting "constant-sum", I think this is generally implied by most people using it. There was the interesting "zero-sum" example in the linked article that veered away from "constant-sum" with asymmetrical payoffs, 100,0 or 0,1, meaning that depending on the outcome of the game the total sum would be different. This, to me disqualifies it from being called a zero-sum game, given the common u...
Hi Vladimir,
Thanks for your comment, please excuse the delay in getting back, I'm actually busily digesting your response and the various branches of dependencies that comprise it (in terms of links to other concepts). I intend to get back to you with a considered answer, but am enjoying taking my time exploring the ideas you've linked to.
Thanks for your recommendations, I look forward to reading them all.
I'm aligned with your thinking about the growth of positive-sum games (it's the premise of the site where my posts originate). I was interested that you believe that zero-sum games will return "due to the laws of physics". What do you think is going to change about physics to reverse the trend towards positive-sum games? We live in a planet with surplus free energy (from the sun, which makes positive-sum systems from life to civilisation possible), so I'm not sure why we would expect (whil... (read more)