That is correct
There were six people of 168 respondents who came via people some of the authors already knew or snowballing. I don't think this would have much effect on the overall picture of the results
It was an anonymous poll so this would not have an effect
This is a misunderstanding as I discuss I my comment below. The respondents were selected from a list according to the criteria set out. This doesn't mean the authors emailed their friends
The personalised outreach mentioned just means that the respondents were initially sent a stock email and then when they didn't respond, they were sent a more personalised message. It doesn't meant that the surveyors emailed their friends. The survey was based on mass outreach from a list from professional societies
Snowballing contacts does introduce a risk of bias but that is mitigated by the disciplinary and geographic spread in the target sample. Respondents in non developed countries gave a higher chance of zoonosis, so the prospect that the survey was biased because it was sent to eg Kristian andersen who then recommended people who knew favoured his opinion seems low.
It is true that... (read more)
Hello,
Thanks for taking the time to do this. I'm not really a fan of the way you approach writing up your thoughts here. The post seems high on snark, rhetoric and bare assertion, and low on clarity, reasoning transparency, and quality of reasoning. The piece feels like you are leaning on your reputation to make something like a political speech, which will get you credit among certain groups, rather than a reasoned argument designed to persuade anyone who doesn't already like you. For example, you say:
... (read 746 more words →)But at least the crazy kids are trying. At all. They get to be wrong, where most others are not even wrong.
Also, future children in another galaxy?
As mentioned in my other comment, unless the people you are visiting are hiding at home all the time, you are not going to have much effect on the chance they get covid over any six month period. you might just bring it forward a bit time. but if they are living a relatively normal life eg going to shops (as I think they should) then it's not going to make much difference since covid has been let rip in the US.
Re (1) I think you could do that with lateral flow testing rather than taking a vaccine that may be net harmful to your health. The false negative rate of a... (read more)
I don't think that makes much difference because I don't think it has much effect on the total number of infections - you would really be changing the time at which someone gets the virus given that we're not trying to contain it anymore.
One way round the concern about visiting the retirement home would be to do a lateral flow test before you go in. If you're seeing extremely vulnerable people a lot, then it might be worth getting the vaccine. But the IFR is now lower than the flu for all ages and I think should be treated accordingly
In the AI safety literature, AI alignment is often presented as conceptually distinct from capabilities. However, (1) the distinction seems somewhat fuzzy and (2) many techniques that are supposed to improve alignment also improve capabilities.
(1) The distinction is fuzzy because one common way of defining alignment is getting an AI system to do what the programmer or user intends. However, programmers intend for systems to be capable. eg we want chess systems to win at chess. So, a system that wins more is more intent aligned, and is also more capable.
(2) eg This Irving et al (2018) paper by a team at Open AI proposes debate as a way to improve safety... (read more)
Correction my apologies. Apparently 30 respondents were snowballed from 17 others. We'll look into how this affects the results