Epistemic status: model-building based on observation, with a few successful unusual predictions. Anecdotal evidence has so far been consistent with the model. This puts it at risk of seeming more compelling than the evidence justifies just yet. Caveat emptor.

Imagine you're a very young child. Around, say, three years old.

You've just done something that really upsets your mother. Maybe you were playing and knocked her glasses off the table and they broke.

Of course you find her reaction uncomfortable. Maybe scary. You're too young to have detailed metacognitive thoughts, but if you could reflect on why you're scared, you wouldn't be confused: you're scared of how she'll react.

She tells you to say you're sorry.

You utter the magic words, hoping that will placate her.

And she narrows her eyes in suspicion.

"You...

This is an entry in the 'Dungeons & Data Science' series, a set of puzzles where players are given a dataset to analyze and an objective to pursue using information from that dataset.

Estimated Complexity: 4/5  (this is a guess, I will update based on feedback/seeing how the scenario goes)

STORY

The Demon King rises in his distant Demon Castle.  Across the free lands of the world, his legions spread, leaving chaos and death in their wake.  The only one who can challenge him is the Summoned Hero, brought by the Goddess Herself from a distant world to aid this one in its time of need.  The Summoned Hero must call together all the free peoples of the world under their banner, to triumph united where they would surely fall...

We’re coming out firmly against it.

Our attitude:

The customer is always right. Yes, you should go ahead and fix your own damn pipes if you know how to do that, and ignore anyone who tries to tell you different. And if you don’t know how to do it, well, it’s at your own risk.

With notably rare exceptions, it should be the same for everything else.

I’ve been collecting these for a while. It’s time.

Campaign Talk

Harris-Walz platform includes a little occupational licensing reform, as a treat.

Universal Effects and Recognition

Ohio’s ‘universal licensing’ law has a big time innovation, which is that work experience outside the state actually exists and can be used to get a license (WSJ).

Occupational licensing decreases the number of Black men in licensed professions by up to 19%,...

Recent discussions about artificial intelligence safety have focused heavily on ensuring AI systems remain under human control. While this goal seems laudable on its surface, we should carefully examine whether some proposed safety measures could paradoxically enable rather than prevent dangerous concentrations of power.

The Control Paradox

The fundamental tension lies in how we define "safety." Many current approaches to AI safety focus on making AI systems more controllable and aligned with human values. But this raises a critical question: controllable by whom, and aligned with whose values?

When we develop mechanisms to control AI systems, we are essentially creating tools that could be used by any sufficiently powerful entity - whether that's a government, corporation, or other organization. The very features that make an AI system "safe" in terms...

To update our credence on whether or not LLMs are conscious, we can ask how many of the Butlin/Long indicator properties for phenomenal consciousness are satisfied by LLMs. To start this program, I zoomed in on an indicator property that is required for consciousness under higher-order theory, nicknamed “HOT-2”: Metacognitive monitoring distinguishing reliable perceptual representations from noise. Do today’s LLMs have this property, or at least have the prerequisites such that future LLMs may develop it?

In this post, I’ll describe my first-pass attempt at answering this question. I surveyed the literature on LLM capabilities relevant to HOT-2, namely LLM metacognition, confidence calibration and introspection. There is evidence that LLMs have at least rudimentary versions of each capability. Still, the extent to which the exact results of the experiments translate...

Developments around relationships and dating have a relatively small speed premium, so I figured I would wait until I had a full post worth of them.

Indeed I now present such a post, in which I present several theories as to why so many of you might still be single.

While I am my usual opinionated self, I am not going to be offering a section of my list of related Good Advice. That would be its own project, which may or may not happen at some time in the future. There is still much in the way of practical implications or implied advice throughout.

You’re Single Because You’re Not Even Trying

A 2022 sample of singles is out, and charts are available, so that seems like a good place to...

We begin with three stories about three people.

First, Zhu Di, emperor of China from 1402 to 1424. In that period, it was traditional for foreign envoys to present gifts to the emperor and make a show of submission, reinforcing the emperor’s authority and China’s image as the center of civilization. Yet the emperor would send the envoys off with gifts in return, often worth more than the gifts the envoy had given - suggesting that the emperor’s authority and dominance did not actually translate into much bargaining power.

Second, Kevin Systrom, one of the founders of Instagram. When Instagram was bought by Facebook for $1B in 2012, it had only 13 employees. Systrom presumably found himself with a great deal of money, the most direct form of bargaining...

In an attempt to get myself to write more here is my own shortform feed. Ideally I would write something daily, but we will see how it goes.