All of Matt Vincent's Comments + Replies

[...]spontaneous large protests tends to be in response to triggering events[...]

Unless you have a very optimistic view of warning shots, we shouldn't rely on such an opportunity.

typically don't interact non-trivially

Or, as Orwell would prefer, "typically interact trivially".

I would have liked to see those who disagree with this comment engage with it more substantially. One reason I think that we're likely to have a warning shot is that LLM-based AIs are pretty consistently overconfident. Also, AI Control schemas have a probabalistic chance of catching misaligned AIs.

I know this is an old comment, but it's expressing a popular sentiment under a popular post, so I'm replying mainly for others' sake.

There's an organization called PauseAI that lobbies for an international treaty against building powerful AI systems. It's an international organization, but the U.S. branches in particular could use a lot of help.

I've never worked in HR, and I don't think that any of my friends have, either, so I know very little about the field. What are the channels of feedback that you (or HR professionals more generally) use to evaluate hiring decisions after the fact?

I think this post suffers from a lack of rigor regarding the limits of the advice. One limit is that, if you let your vibes steer you away from interpersonal interactions, then you'll eliminate interactions that have higher-than-average upside potential.

In most cases, most people's perceptions are similar to yours. (e.g. If you think that the guy who asked you out is weird, then most of the other women who he asked out probably think so, too.) Consequently, if you and everyone else in the same situation are steered by vibes, then your failures of judgement... (read more)

I took another look at my source, and I think you're right. The subject of the plot, the Federal Register (FR), lists changes to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). It also suffers from the other problem that I identified (repeals counting as new rules).

For anyone who's curious, here's a nice overview of measures of regulatory burden.

This post isn't without value, but I am put-off by its use of A) working papers instead of published research, and B) the use of an LLM for doing research.

In terms of Zvi's 4 levels of legality, I think that your reasoning is a valid argument against crossing the line between 2 and 3. However, I don't think that it's a valid argument against what Zvi is actually proposing, which is going from 1 to 2. If we have an obligation to help people who have APD, then the most cost-effective/highest-utility solution might involve making gambling less convenient for the general population.

What exactly is your hypothesis? Is it something like: P1) People are irrationally averse to actions that have a positive expected value and a low probability of success. P2) Self-deception enables people to ignore the low probability of success. C) Self-deception is adaptive.

I tried to test this reasoning by referencing the research that Daniel Kahneman (co-coiner of the term "planning fallacy") has done about optimism. He has many criticisms of over-optimism among managers/executives, as well as more ordinary people (e.g. those who pursue self-employment... (read more)

I think that kind of person is included in group 1:

"People who are adversarial or untrustworthy [...] as representatives of the system on behalf of which they act".

This question might be independent from my other one, so I'm putting it in a separate comment.

What's your primary solution to the problems that you list? Do you think that it can be mostly solved by teachers--e.g. by not exaggerating the applicability of the course material--or do you think that it requires a systemic solution--e.g. by sending the disruptive and inattentive kids to a class (potentially a quite unconventional one) that they're more interested in?

I ask because I'm considering changing careers to become a high school math teacher, and I'd lik... (read more)

Would you say the same of most other class subjects? I ask because, with the exceptions of reading and persuasive writing, I don't think that any conventional school subject is more applicable to the average person's life than grade-school math.

Yes, people can get through life with an astonishing ignorance of mathematics, but they can get through life with an even more astonishing ignorance of social studies, literature, and the sciences.

In my opinion, the purpose of public basic education is twofold:

1. Identify the children who are talented at a given subj

I think that I have a personal example of this advice in action. I often find it helpful to use my driving speed and the distance to the next turn to estimate how soon I'll need to turn. That indicates how desperately I need to change lanes, whether it's a good time to initiate a conversation, etc.

Is the main point of this post that people should play around more with numbers and estimation? If so, then I agree with it, but there are two aspects of the post that I found distracting.

One was the overly broad use of the word "arithmetic". Arithmetic and algebra have substantially different histories, and they occupy somewhat different roles in contemporary society. (Especially for young math students.) Consequently, I think it's best to avoid using the words interchangeably.

The other is the repeated emphasis of dimensional analysis. Although it was pro... (read more)

Does anyone here have qualms about the moral status of the embryos that are discarded in this process? I'm aware of the OP's views on the issue, and I recently addressed them elsewhere, but I'm curious about the average viewer of this page.

Thanks for the response. I realize that this is a very belated reply, and that it would have done a lot more good prior to the release of your How-To-PSC essay. Nevertheless, I'll respond to a few of your points.

For one thing, an embryo that was conceived from the gametes of two humans doesn't "grow into a human" or "develop into a human"; it is a human. I'm not saying that this necessarily confers moral worth, but it does jog the question of which trait does, and you don't provide a strong alternative.

In defense of the ZEF's potentiality: before fertiliza... (read more)

I find this post very encouraging, but I can't shake a particular concern about the approach that it recommends.

From extrapolating past experiences, it seems like every time I try (or even succeed) at something ambitious, I soon find that somebody else already did that thing, or proved why that thing can't work, and they did it better than I would have unless I put in ten times as much effort as I did. In other words, I struggle to know what's already been done.

I notice that this happens a lot less often with mathematics than it used to. Perhaps part of it... (read more)

I would be completely on-board with this if there was a method of improvement other than IVF embryo selection, since I consider human embryos to have moral value. Even if you don't, unless you're very sure of your position, I'd ask you to reconsider on the basis of the precautionary principle alone--i.e. if you're wrong, then you'd be creating a huge problem.

I'm sorry if I'm just being too much of a dodo to perceive the mystery, but your scenario seems easily accounted for. You can use a Bayesian network to infer causality if and only if you have valid data to fill it with. Of course wearing large pants does not cause one not to exercise, but no real set of data would indicate that it did. Am I missing something?

EDIT: shortly after writing this, I read up on faithfulness and Milton Friedman's thermostat, so the "if and only if" part of my comment isn't quite accurate. Still, the pants size scenario doesn't seem like one of these exceptional cases.

Statements of the sort "we shouldn't balance the risks and opportunities of X" are substantive only where X is closely related to a fundamental principle or a terminal goal. Since nobody really wants superhuman AGI for its own sake (in fact, it's just the opposite: it's the ultimate instrumental goal), "we should balance the risks and opportunities of AGI" is an applause light.

Agreed. Zvi's proposition also simply doesn't align with first-world people's motivations, as far as I can tell. In short, first-worlders have a lot of other interesting ways that they can use their time.

The notion that money isn't important or that "knowledge is the real wealth" wasn't intended to be a universal law; it's only applicable in cases where money is sufficiently abundant (as the title says). The scenarios you list do not meet that condition, so they are not situations that the OP intended to address.

With an additional decade of political battles to scrutinize, I see this sort of thing playing out with things like immigration policy, and possibly COVID policy, too.

From what I can gather, there are plenty of Republicans who would be willing to make a one-time amnesty concession in exchange for securing the border. However, Republican politicians are aware that if they give any ground on amnesty in this particular case, then Democratic politicians are very likely to 1) drag their feet on the securing-the-border part of the deal, and then 2) cite the previous amnesty policy as precedent for future amnesty policies in the court of public opinion.

Doesn't this depend on whether one is referring to fluid intelligence or crystal intelligence? Human babies may have the same crystal intelligence as adult pigs, but they have much higher fluid intelligence.

I think what happened here is that the vegetarian failed to realize that the component of intelligence that people find morally significant is fluid, not crystal, and then he equivocated between the two. EY realized what was going on, even if subconsciously, which is why he trolled the vegetarian instead of disputing his premise. Finally, Fallible failed to pick up on the distinction entirely by assuming that "intelligence" always refers to fluid intelligence.

It's useful until the jester gains a reputation as someone whose views shouldn't be taken seriously, at which point the jester's dissent may begin to have the opposite effect.