alexvermeer

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: A Conversation with Nate Soares and Tim Urban

5mo

Back in May, we announced that Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares’s new book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies was coming out in September. At long last, the book is here!^[1]

US and UK books, respectively. IfAnyoneBuildsIt.com

Read on for info about reading groups, ways to help, and updates on coverage the book has received so far.

Discussion Questions & Reading Group Support

We want people to read and engage with the contents of the book. To that end, we’ve published a list of discussion questions. Find it here: Discussion Questions for Reading Groups

We’re also interested in offering support to reading groups, including potentially providing copies of the book and helping coordinate facilitation. If interested, fill... (read 979 more words →)

293

yams

yams, alexvermeer

7mo

Join Tim Urban (creator of Wait But Why) and Nate Soares as they chat about AI and answer questions from the audience about Nate and Eliezer’s forthcoming book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.

Hosted virtually over Zoom on August 10 at noon PST | 3pm EST

This event is open to anyone who's pre-ordered the book and completed this form.

Replying toMIRI needs an Office Manager (aka Force Multiplier)

MIRI needs an Office Manager (aka Force Multiplier)

Then you should definitely apply!

The salary range is "competitive" given the job and the bay area. It depends a lot of past experience and job performance. You should be able to afford to live in Berkeley, especially if you're a dual-income family.

To echo what ciphergoth said, if you're the right candidate, we would definitely make it work.

MIRI needs an Office Manager (aka Force Multiplier)

11y

(Cross-posted from MIRI's blog.)

MIRI's looking for a full-time office manager to support our growing team. It’s a big job that requires organization, initiative, technical chops, and superlative communication skills. You’ll develop, improve, and manage the processes and systems that make us a super-effective organization. You’ll obsess over our processes (faster! easier!) and our systems (simplify! simplify!). Essentially, it’s your job to ensure that everyone at MIRI, including you, is able to focus on their work and Get Sh*t Done.

That’s a super-brief intro to what you’ll be working on. But first, you need to know if you’ll even like working here.

A Bit About Us

We’re a research nonprofit working on the critically important problem of... (read 1910 more words →)

The book looks great!

Thanks!

A bunch of inter-book links such as ...

D'oh. It's all good in the epub, but something broke (for very dumb reasons) converting the mobi. It's fixed now. If you've already bought the book though Amazon or e-junkie, you'll have to re-download the file to get the fixed one (in a few hours, while Amazon approves the new book). Sorry about that.

The difference between a link going to the web and one going to a location within the book aren't obvious: one is only a slighter darker grey than the other. In Calibri the links are a nice green/blue, but my kindle doesn't have colours.

Not much we can do about this. Amazon is very restrictive in how you can modify the styling of links. It works fine for displays with color, but people with e-ink displays are out of luck. :-(

Thanks.

Yup, but those are convenient distribution platforms.

Just a reminder that mistakes/problems/errors can be sent to errata@intelligence.org and we'll try fix them!

Approximately 600,000 words!

From Amazon, 30% goes to Amazon and 70% goes to MIRI.

From e-junkie (the pay-what-you-want option): 100% goes to MIRI, minus PayPal transaction fees (a few %).

Replying toHPMOR Wrap Parties: Resources, Information and Discussion

HPMOR Wrap Parties: Resources, Information and Discussion

(Habryka here. My account still appears to be broken)

I want to outline my thinking a bit, about why I decided to organize all of this with so much reliance on Facebook:

The attendance at these events heavily relies on networking effects and reducing trivial inconveniences. I did consider organizing it on LessWrong, but it's just less integrated into most peoples life as Facebook is. This was the easiest way for people to invite their friends, get notified of new parties, spread information and, most importantly, get interested in the event if you so far haven't been completely hooked on the book.

This is the last obvious big opportunity to get more people to... (read more)

Replying toHPMOR Wrap Parties: Resources, Information and Discussion

HPMOR Wrap Parties: Resources, Information and Discussion

(Writing from this account, since through some strange bug my original account can't comment on this post):

I just added the Spreadsheet to the list of resources, and am just in the process of getting everyone's contact information. I hope this helps everyone who doesn't have Facebook to find the details for the parties in their area. I think posting every wrap party individually is probably a bad idea.

Replying toKarma awards for proofreaders of the Less Wrong Sequences ebook

Karma awards for proofreaders of the Less Wrong Sequences ebook

The plan is to do both.

Replying toKarma awards for proofreaders of the Less Wrong Sequences ebook

Karma awards for proofreaders of the Less Wrong Sequences ebook

Hopefully by the end of the year.

One Year of Pomodoros

Karma awards for proofreaders of the Less Wrong Sequences ebook

12y

(Pomodoros have been talked about a bunch on LW. I, like elharo, first started using the technique after attending a CFAR workshop. Cross-posted from my blog.)

The pomodoro technique is, in short, starting a timer and doing 25 minutes of focused work on a single task without interruption, followed by a five minute break. Choose a new task, restart the timer, and repeat.

Throughout 2013 I used pomodoros to execute on pretty much all of my life projects, organized into the following categories:

work – at MIRI
bizdev – other income-generating projects
growth – personal development projects (e.g. reading books, taking notes, making Anki decks; monthly reviews)
misc – miscellaneous life maintenance projects (e.g. banking stuff, knocking off a bunch of small todo’s,

... (read 581 more words →)

[LINK] Is it worth the time?

12y

MIRI is gathering a bunch of Eliezer’s writings into a nicely-edited ebook, currently titled The Hard Part is Actually Changing Your Mind. This book will ultimately be released in various digital formats (Kindle MOBI, EPUB, and PDF). Much of the initial work for this project is complete. What we need now are volunteers to review the book's chapters to:

verify that all the content has been correctly transferred (text, equations, and images),
proofread for any typographical errors (spelling, punctuation, layout, etc.),
verify all internal and external links,
and more.

This project has been added to Youtopia, MIRI’s volunteer system. (Click “Register as a Volunteer” here to sign up. Already signed up? Go here.)

LW Karma Bonus

For this special... (read more)

Call for help: volunteers needed to proofread MIRI's publications

13y

Another gem from xkcd: Is It Worth the Time? It visually answers the question:

How long can you work on making a routine task more efficient before you're spending more time than you save?

Of course, he's not the first person to ask this question, but the visual is handy. Note that the times are calculated assuming you'll save the time over five years.

For example, I've been pondering how to shorten my showers. If I can shave off 1 minute daily, I should be willing to invest up to (but no more than) an entire day to do it. If I think I can shave off five minutes preparing my breakfast, I should be willing to spend up to six days attempting to do so.

Looking for alteration suggestions for the official Sequences ebook

13y

MIRI needs volunteers to proofread our soon-to-be-released publications, such as Eliezer's "Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics." Some reasons to get involved:

Get a sneak peek at our publications before they become publicly available.
Earn points at MIRIvolunteers.org, our online volunteer system that runs on Youtopia. (Even if you're not interested in the points, tracking your time through Youtopia helps us manage and quantify the volunteer proofreading effort.)
Having polished and well-written publications is of high-value to MIRI.
Help speed up our publication process. Proofreading is currently our biggest bottle-neck.

Some of the papers that are sitting in the pipeline and ready for proofreading right now (or will be very soon):

"Avoiding Unintended AI Behaviors" by Bill Hibbard
"Decision Support for Safe

... (read 168 more words →)

13y

As you may have heard, the Singularity Institute is in the process of creating an official ebook version of The Sequences (specifically, Eliezer's Major Sequences written between 2006 and 2009).

Now is an opportune time to make any alterations to the contents of the Sequences. We're looking for suggestions about:

Posts to add to the Sequences. E.g., "scope insensitivity" is not currently a part of any sequence, perhaps it should be? Preferably suggest a specific location, or at least a specific sequence where you think the addition would logically go.
Posts to remove from the Sequences. Are there redundant or unnecessary posts? To call the Sequences long is a bit of an understatement.
Alternatives to "The Sequences"