All of Maris Sala's Comments + Replies

I wonder how this played out? Specifically:

  • Did you get people showing interest in collaborating? People that let you know they're already working on these problems?
  • Did any collaboration take place? Why, why not?
  • Was there any progress on any of the projects? 


Book: "Statistical Rethinking" by Richard McElreath
Description: in-depth introduction to Bayesian statistical analysis

Positives:
- Each chapter begins with an intuitive short story of what the meaning of the statistical concept is in real life
- Contains exercises in the end of the chapters
- Wide variety of example types, not constrained to just one field

Negatives:
- It is pretty much a textbook otherwise - it's the narrative style stories in the beginnings of each chapter that makes me share this. For all intents and purposes you may ignore the parts where h... (read more)

This is a cool attempt to get some insight into what's going on in AI safety! It makes sense we have had so few surveys directly about this, as they are seriously difficult to do correctly - especially in a field like AI safety where there is a lot of vagueness in how people think about positive and negative outcomes.

Most of the comments are and will be about how the survey could be better and more elaborate in what it's asking, which would mean that the survey would probably ideally be several pages long and take about 30min to answer - at the least. And ... (read more)

This is beautiful! Does come off as a utopia. There are student cities which are special because they have actually spaced out the university buildings across the entire town - it makes education more visible, but not necessarily more accessible (I'd be curious as to what metric could be used to compare a university town to a university that is more closed off in a location outside of where people normally go). 

Denmark has a way of opening up public libraries for everyone - they have made libraries where books are almost hidden away - you can order th... (read more)

2Henrik Karlsson
Yes, the full vision is a bit utopian, and might not even be the best way to do things, but there are many places and times that have come pretty close and been successful. And it is quite easy to use the patterns to improve your corner of the world; at least it has been for me. And on danish libraries: I love them. Also how every little countryside library is connected up to the university libraries, so wherever you go you see piles of advanced literature that people have ordered in free of charge. It makes it viable to have an intellectual life anywhere you live in the country, which is very hard in most countries. Also I love that they trust people to enter when it is unstaffed, which makes it much more accessible. Ah! Going into a closed library, turning the lights on and sitting down to work! Also enjoyed the thoughts on the value of making things inaccessible to make them sacred, or high achieving. That is something to keep in mind - how can we make spaces that filter people out, and prime them for a certain seriousness, in a fair and open way, that does not unnecessarily limit playfulness?

This is an interesting way to depict how different scenarios of AI takeover would look like. There's a lot of uncertainty around how the scenarios will play out but if they're written out like this (with the epic links as well), then it'd be much easier for people to understand the different failure modes. Great work! ^^