All of Zolmeister's Comments + Replies

Writing Doom – Award-Winning Short Film on Superintelligence (2024)

Grand Prize Winner - Future of Life Institute's Superintelligence Imagined Contest

Written & directed by Suzy Shepherd

I was referring to their (free) DDoS protection service, rather than their CDN services (also free). In addition to their automated system, you can manually enable an "under-attack" mode that aggressively captchas requests.

Setup is simply pointing DNS name-servers at Cloudflare. Caching HTML pages for logged out (i.e. cookie-less) users is a trivial config ("cache-everything").

I recommend Cloudflare.

Superintelligence FAQ [1] as well.

Along the same lines, I found this analogy by concrete example exceptionally elucidative.

While merely anti-bacterial, Nano Silver Fluoride looks promising. (Metallic silver applied to teeth once a year to prevent cavities).

Yudkowsky has written about The Ultimatum Game. It has been referenced here 1 2 as well.

When somebody offers you a 7:5 split, instead of the 6:6 split that would be fair, you should accept their offer with slightly less than 6/7 probability. Their expected value from offering you 7:5, in this case, is 7 * slightly less than 6/7, or slightly less than 6.

Maybe add posts in /tag/ai-evaluations to /robots.txt

Sure, but it does not preclude it. Moreover, if the costs of the actions are not borne by the altruist (e.g. by defrauding customers, or extortion), I would not consider it altruism.

In this sense, altruism is a categorization tag placed on actions.

I do see how you might add a second, deontological definition ('a belief system held by altruists'), but I wouldn't. From the post, "Humane" or "Inner Goodness" seem more apt in exploring these ideas.

I do not see the contradiction. Could you elaborate?

I found this section, along with dath ilani Governance, and SCIENCE! particularly brilliant.

This concept is introduced in Book 1 as the solution to the Ultimatum Game, and describes fairness as Shapely value.

When somebody offers you a 7:5 split, instead of the 6:6 split that would be fair, you should accept their offer with slightly less than 6/7 probability. Their expected value from offering you 7:5, in this case, is 7 * slightly less than 6/7, or slightly less than 6.

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Once you've arrived at a notion of a 'fair price' in some one-time trading situation where the seller sets a price and the buyer decides whether to accept, the seller does

Eliezer: What do you want the system to do?

Bob: I want the system to do what it thinks I should want it to do.

Eliezer: The Hidden Complexity of Wishes

Vitalik's Optimism retro-funding post mentions a few instances where secret ballots are used today, and which could arguably be improved by these cryptographic primitives:

• The Israeli Knesset uses secret votes to elect the president and a few other officials
• The Italian parliament has used secret votes in a variety of contexts. In the 19th century, it was considered an important way to protect parliament votes from interference by a monarchy.
• Discussions in US parliaments were less transparent before 1970, and some researchers argue that the switch to mo

If we cannot prove who anyone actually voted for, we can't prove who actually won at all.

Using zero-knowledge proofs it is possible to prove that votes were counted correctly, without revealing who anyone voted for. See MACI [1], which additionally provides inability to prove your own vote to a third party.

if the two agents are able to accurately predict each others' actions and reason using FDT, then it is possible for the two agents to cooperate

Couldn't you equally require QV participants pre-commit to non-collusion?

In The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, Bryan Caplan uses Earth data to make the case that compulsory education does not significantly increase literacy.

My reading is that he claims compulsory education had little effect in Britain and the US, where literacy was already widespread.

When Britain first made education compulsory for 5-to-10-year-olds in 1880, over 95% of 15- year-olds were already literate. [1]

There's an interesting footnote where he references a paper on economic returns of compulsory educa... (read more)

Follow the white rabbit

The source makes explicit reference to refined starches:

c All foods are assumed to be in nutrient-dense forms; lean or low-fat and prepared with minimal added sugars; refined starches, saturated fat, or sodium

Though to be clear, I do not endorse the 'system' as proposed. I do not believe that it adequately reflects nuance in health effects of food consumption, nor do I believe it accurately represents modern food health science (where are their sources?).

For example, the hard-line stance against saturated fats is questionable [1] [2] [3]. Not explicitl... (read more)

Yes I count most (by GI) flour as equivalent to sugar [1]. As for keeping high GI carbs under 10%, I have insufficient information. To keep all carbs under 10% would be ketogenic, which while not specifically recommended (unless trying to lose weight), has shown interesting results in the literature [2].

Pancakes contain significant quantities of carbohydrates (sugar), with glycemic index comparable to that of table sugar. Those pancakes look like they're closer to 3 sweets than 1 (sorry kids).

For those looking to learn more, erowid.org is an excellent starting point.

I think it balances prescribed burns with other methods of fire-suppression (fire-breaks, thinning), and incentivizes local coordination among neighbors.

Hold land-owners liable for fire-damage caused to their abutting neighbors.

I recommend Ample (lifelong subscriber). It has high quality ingredients (no soy protein), fantastic macro ratios (5/30/65 - Ample K), and an exceptional founder.

Since time is the direction of increased entropy, this feels like it has some deep connection to the notion of agents as things that reduce entropy (only locally, obviously) to achieve their preferences

Reminded me of Utility Maximization = Description Length Minimization.

It's hard for me to credibly believe that this harm happened due to the algorithm, that no humans at Google were clearly aware of what was going on, when Googlers were being sent out to events to pitch to this market

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. It sounds like the fraud involved was extremely sophisticated, as it was hiding behind state negligence. Google now requires these advertisers to be licenced by a reputable third party.

The problem I see here isn't just that the Ads team gets paid for participation i

You have not produced evidence that billboards are generally 'criminal mind control', only that they violate norms for shared spaces for people like Banksy. Ultimately this boils down to local political disagreement, rather than some clever ploy by The Advertisers to get into your brain.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you.

This is strictly true in the sense that advertisement is negative cost and negative value, but that is exactly why it is used as a tool for producing otherwise dif... (read more)

I was interested in her claim that the Bullet Cluster is evidence against dark matter.

The scientists estimated the probability for a Bullet-Cluster-like collision to be about one in ten billion, and concluded: that we see such a collision is incompatible with the concordance model. And that’s how the Bullet Cluster became strong evidence in favor of modified gravity.

Technically, the market I should make corresponds to what I think other people's probabilities are likely to be given they can see my market. I might give a wider market because only people that think they're getting a good deal with trade with me

Technically, market making is betting on price volatility by providing liquidity. To illustrate, I'll use a simple automated market maker.

Yes * No = Const

This means I will accept any trade of Yes/No tokens, so long as the product remains constant. Slippage is proportional to the quantity of tokens available. Pr... (read more)

Each of these functions takes ~30s to run, so it ends up being more efficient to put them in one job instead of multiple.

This is a perfect example of the AWS Batch API 'leaking' into your code. The whole point of a compute resource pool is that you don't have to think about how many jobs you create.
It sounds like you're using the wrong tool for the job (or a misconfiguration - e.g. limit the batch template to 1 vcpu).

The benefit of the pass-through approach is that it uses language-level features to do the validation

You get language-level validatio... (read more)

The reason to be explicit is to be able to handle control flow.

def run_job(make_dataset1: bool, make_dataset2: bool):
    if make_dataset1 && make_dataset2:
        make_third_dataset()

If your jobs are independent, then they should be scheduled as such. This allows jobs to run in parallel.

def make_datasets_handler(job):
    for dataset in job.params.datasets:
        schedule_job('make_dataset', {dataset})

def make_dataset_handler(job):
     {name, params} = job.params.dataset
     constructors.get(name)(**params)

Passing random params to fun... (read more)

I dropped out of high school. It's not a place for smart people.

Some highlights from my .vimrc

" Prevent data loss
set undofile
" Flush to disk every character (Note: disk intensive, e.g. makes large copy-pastes slow)
set updatecount=1

" Directory browsing usability
let g:netrw_liststyle = 3 " tree list view
let g:netrw_banner = 0

" Copy for X11
vnoremap <C-c> "cy <Bar> :call system('xclip -selection clipboard', @c)<CR><CR>

Also worth checking out CoC (language server)

Twitch has recently begun experimenting with predictions for streamers using their channel-points currency.

The history of central banking (and large scale monetary policy generally), is fascinating. This lecture I found particularly enlightening (George Selgin): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeIljifA8Ls

Noteworthy remarks:

• Even before central banking, government regulation required banks purchase junk assets (causing failures)
• Nonuniform currency price slippage (when each bank issued its own notes) may have been < 1%
• The National Bank Act taxed private bank notes at 10%, effectively destroying private currency circulation
  • National Bank notes were backed b

I have removed the good/bad duality entirely, as I found it confusing.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/M2LWXsJxKS626QNEA/the-trouble-with-good

Puzzle 1:

To use a more realistic example, it's hard for me to agree that a billionaire values their tenth vacation home more than a homeless person who is in danger of freezing in the winter.

I don't see "value" as a feeling. A freezing person might desire a warm fire, but their value of it is limited by what can be expressed.

That said, a person is a complex asset, and so the starving person might trade in their "apparent plight" (e.g. begging).

For example, the caring seller of the last sandwich might value alleviating "apparent plight" more than millions of shar... (read more)

Tap again directly on your prediction to remove it.

What if instead of producing new things to value, people change the things they value. Perhaps increased homogeneity of value creates more efficient economies of scale.

If I understand correctly, then Rocket Pool fits the bill. It is a network (with mild centralization) that allows people to buy and sell shares of a validator pool. Risk is spread across the network in case of node failure.

Note on 1, the withdrawal key is separate from the validator key, such that one can validate but not withdraw.

Edit: Though I agree on 2, that in the long term the fees such networks will be able to charge will decline significantly.

There will not be a secondary market for Eth2 stakes

Actually, Coinbase just announced intent to deliver this secondary market. A tokenized Eth2 stake may then also be traded on DeFi exchanges. https://blog.coinbase.com/ethereum-2-0-staking-rewards-are-coming-soon-to-coinbase-a25d8ac622d5

It's not 'free', just very very cheap. If food at the mall was as cheap to produce as ketchup, they would probably just make the food free to bring in business.

It's based on an observation of the continual efficient pricing pressure of competitive markets combined with technological innovation which reduces the real cost of food.

And when I go spend my money I impose a cost on the world

You impose no such cost, as those willing to exchange your money for their services do so profitably.

Is working good for the rest of society?

Suppose you do some work and earn $100. The question from the rest of society’s perspective is whether we got more benefit than the $100 we paid you.

We can get more than $100 if e.g. you spend your $100 on a Netflix subscription...

If you receive $100 for work, that means you have already provided at least $100 in value to society. That society might gain additional benefit from how you spend your money is merely coincidental.