[...] the only good thing about any form of utilitarianism: [...] Anyone with complete information of the universe could [...]
It doesn't make sense to use an impossibility as part of the judging criteria for the goodness of something.
An action/utility function can only ever be a function over (at most) all information available to the agent.
I'm not arguing for any particular view, but the causal reach of possible policies/actions should determine the reach of the averaging function, right? It makes as little sense to include other possible universes in our calculation of optimal policies for this universe, as it does to try to coordinate policies between two space-time points (within the same universe) that can't causally interact with one another.
If we're trying to find and implement good policies (according to whatever definition of "good"), then in deciding on goodness of a policy, we should only care about the things that we can actually affect, and in proportion to the degree to which we can affect them.
A bunch of new names on the RSVP - looking forward to meeting you all tomorrow! Note that Yi Xin is so 'small and casual' that it doesn't usually take table bookings, but it shouldn't take any longer than 10 mins to get a table. Please try to let me know in the comments here if you're likely to be more than 20 mins late so we can time our 'chope-ing' (we'll need multiple tables).
See you tomorrow night!
Ah, interesting to think about the stuff in these principles/ideas for non-mathy problems!
Regarding your point about actively forgetting: Yeah, it seems like there's an interesting trade-off to consider in choosing how long to stay "steeped" in a task. I'm guessing it depends a lot on the "depth" of the problem being solved - i.e. for some problems I think it can take several days or more just to get to the point where you've loaded in enough "context" to start actually making any progress on it, and so you need to stay deep in it for several days at a tim...
Thanks for commenting - glad to know it's useful!
The short answer is that most of the lessons come from my hobby of thinking about weird learning rules - alternatives to back-prop that make more sense under certain conditions/requirements.
(Can't say I pass my own test from the "Are you solving the right problem?" section, but it's just a hobby anyway.)
Hey all, @FlorianH is right, Yi Xin is closed today - my bad! So we'll be heading across the road to the backup location - the hawker center has lots of different options (including McDonalds). They have excellent an Mala stall (I'll be getting that), but there are a million other stalls there. We'll still be meeting at Yi Xin just in case someone doesn't get this notification.
We'll either eat at the hawker center (if it's quiet enough today), or get takeaway and sit in a public mini park thing that's nearby, or sit in McDonalds (I'll buy us some drinks as...
Hey all, Nathan and I sitting inside - I'm wearing a grey shirt and black shorts. Nathan is wearing a black shirt that says "deep note".
Hey friends, just a quick reminder that the dinner is tomorrow night. I'm going to get there a bit early to try and grab us a table. See you tomorrow! :)
I'm here early, and managed to snag a table. I'm wearing a light-brown shirt and black shorts. My hat is in the middle of the table (it's one of the two outside tables).
No problem 👍
No problem!
Hey khushjammu, I think there is a second group being formed, but if that doesn't go ahead, then you're welcome to join the original group tonight, since @papa can't make it. But please don't abandon the second group if that's going ahead and you've already committed! If you don't reply by 2pm, and assuming the second group isn't being formed, then I'll open it up to the others to fill the slot. Hope that's okay!
No problem!
@khushjammu will get this message as a notification (since they have RSVPed), but I think you'll have to send a private message to @smallsilo (unless they manually subscribed to the comments on this post), because it doesn't seem like LessWrong has proper user tagging.
If you do manage to set up a second group, you may want to organise to arrive 30 minutes earlier or later if possible, since that would make it easier for us to find our respective group members, and minimise any accidental "mixing". If a big group of us all arrive at once, that could look a bit sus, even if we are being sure to remain separated.
Hey! Currently there are seven people so a group of 5, plus 2 waiting (khushjammu and yourself). I'll probably organise another catch up (probably same place and time) in the next few weeks, so if you want you can wait for that. If another person or two join then you could form a second group. In any case, I'll let you know if there's an opening for this week's event due to a couple of people having to drop out 👍
Hey everyone! Since it's such a small gathering and there are some people on the "wait list", please comment as a reply to this message to double-confirm that you're coming.
Note that you'll of course need to be vaccinated to get in (vaccinated=2 weeks after second shot, per trace together app).
We're not able to book a table a head of time (walk-ins only at the moment), but I think we should be able to get a table even if we have to wait outside for 15 mins (I'll arrive a bit before 6pm). Worst case we can just order take-away and head across the road to th...
We may actually be full for this one since I think @papa didn't realise there was an RSVP button (he only commented), but you're first on the "wait list" in case someone needs to drop out. Either way I'm going to organise a few of these so I'll let you know when the next one is 👍
Ah, thanks!
Great! I've just posted a root-level comment in this thread, but I think since you're not RSVPed yet, you won't have received a notification?
Hey Zmavli, Joe, Sunny - looking forward to meeting you next week! There's only one slot remaining and it's been less than a day. If there ends up being a lot more than 5, we could split into a couple of groups, but we'll see. If you do need to pull out, please do so as early as possible to allow another person to swap in. I believe all who have RSVPed will get notifications if I post a comment here, so I'll post a message a few days from the date to make sure everything is in place and maybe start a whatsapp/telegram/signal group (depending on what most people have) and we can go from there 👍
A markdown version of the body doesn't to be in any of the possible fields of the `Post` type. Am I looking in the wrong place? I'm using this:
https://www.lesswrong.com/graphiql
The researchers made the people from this area play different economic games and find out that people with a state are less cooperative than stateless people.
[...]
In the new dog-eat-dog society there are no rules. Everyone fights for himself and there's no shame in behaving in an anti-social way.
Did they control for the size of the village? I'd have thought a smaller village is naturally going to be more cooperative, since they're ingrained with social norms that lean on the fact that everyone knows everyone. E.g. if you screw someone over, then you can't ...
I really like this experimentation. Some thoughts:
Fair point! Done.
It is still concerning to me (of course, having read your original comment), but I can see how it may have mislead others who were skimming.
FWIW, it is concerning to me, too, and was at least a little bit a point of contention between me and each of those three while we were colleagues together at CFAR, and somewhat moreso after I had left. But my intention was not to say "these people are bad" or "these people are casually dangerous." More "these people are heavy-hitters when it comes to other people's psychologies, for better and worse."
If someone spent 100 hours of close interaction with Julia or Dan or Kenzie, I would expect them to have zero negative effects and to have had a great time.
If someone spent 100 hours of close interaction with Anna or Val or Pete, I would want to make absolutely sure they had lots of resources available to them just in case (those three being much more head-melty and having a much wider spread of impacts on people)
As a complete outsider who stumbled upon this post and thread, I find it surprising and concerning that there's anyone at MIRI/CFAR with whom spe...
Small nitpicky request: would you be willing to edit into your quotation the part that goes "just in case (those three being much more head-melty and having a much wider spread of impacts on people)"?
Its excision changes the meaning of my sentence, into something untrue. Those words were there on purpose, because without them the sentence is misleadingly alarming.
Neurons fire at around 200 Hz on average.
The average cortical neuron firing rate is much lower than this.[0] You might have meant maximum rather than average - or am I misunderstanding?
[0] https://aiimpacts.org/rate-of-neuron-firing/#:~:text=Based%20on%20the%20energy%20budget,around%200.16%20times%20per%20second.
Hey all, I've booked a table that seats up to 10, so we have room for a couple more in case there are any last minute RSVPs (it was the only table they had left anyway). We'll meet outside the restaurant at 7pm and wait a bit before heading in. Please try to be on-time-ish, and let me know if you're likely to be late. Eight Treasures is quite busy tomorrow and they're requesting advanced orders, so I'll send out a menu to you all soon and you can pick some stuff. If you're fine with whatever, then I'll fill out the order with a variety of 'recommend' dishe... (read more)