I'm confused by what you mean that GPT-4o is bad? In my experience it has been stronger than plain GPT-4, especially at more complex stuff. I do physics research and it's the first model that can actually improve the computational efficiency of parts of my code that implement physical models. It has also become more useful for discussing my research, in the sense that it dives deeper into specialized topics, while the previous GPT-4 would just respond in a very handwavy way.
You're missing the bigger picture and pattern-matching in the wrong direction. I am not saying the above because I have a need to preserve my "soul" due to misguided intuitions. On the contrary, the reason for my disagreement is that I believe you are not staring into the abyss of physicalism hard enough. When I said I'm agnostic in my previous comment, I said it because physics and empiricism lead me to consider reality as more "unfamiliar" than you do (assuming that my model of your beliefs is accurate). From my perspective, your post and your conclusions are written with an unwarranted degree of certainty, because imo your conception of physics and... (read 534 more words →)
First off, would you agree with my model of your beliefs? Would you consider it an accurate description?
Also, let me make clear that I don't believe in cartesian souls. I, like you, lean towards physicalism, I just don't commit to the explanation of consciousness based on the idea of the brain as a **classical** electronic circuit. I don't fully dismiss it either, but I think it is worse on philosophical grounds than assuming that there is some (potentially minor) quantum effect going on inside the brain that is an integral part of the explanation for our conscious experience. However, even this doesn't feel fully satisfying to me and this is why I... (read 999 more words →)
I find myself strongly disagreeing with what is being said in your post. Let me preface by saying that I'm mostly agnostic with respect to the possible "explanations" of consciousness etc, but I think I fall squarely within camp 2. I say mostly because I lean moderately towards physicalism.
First, an attempt to describe my model of your ontology:
You implicitly assume that consciousness / subjective experience can be reduced to a physical description of the brain, which presumably you model as a classical (as opposed to quantum) biological electronic circuit. Physically, to specify some "brain-state" (which I assume is essentially the equivalent of a "software snapshot" in a classical computer) you just need... (read 924 more words →)
Could you explain what made you change your mind and update back to zero? It's nice to write down your beliefs but it would be much more helpful for the rest of us if you could share what information actually helped you update.
Thank you for the kind words. I do think that the probability is too low, especially given the new revelations, but I believe that this is also due to the choice of wording. The "alien technology has visited our solar system" part smuggles in a few assumptions which "uncorrelate" the question a bit from the recent evidence. To clarify:
The "alien technology" part makes this refer to extraterrestrials and the "solar system" part seems to indicate that said extraterrestrials originate from outside our solar system. So the question alludes to the category of cases where "aliens advanced enough to cross interstellar distances come all the way here only to crash on our planet... (read more)
You are right in saying that the UAP topic has been discussed on Lesswrong. I acknowledge this in the introduction of my post. Could you indicate which post you want me to find by "using the search function"?
I also think it is unfair to say that nothing in my post is worth updating over. Has there been any other document where serious politicians so strongly signal towards a connection of UAPs and non-human intelligence?
Thank you for taking the time to clarify! With this new info I think I can now give a stronger outline of my argument.
First, let me say that I do agree to a high degree with what Eliezer is saying in his tweet. Based on this, I can see why your prior for specifically "Aliens with visible craft" is so low. However, I strongly believe that his argument is focusing too much on a specific case, namely of "extraterrestrials with advanced technology coming from far far away", which is why I also think he is overconfident in his bet. My point is similar to what you are saying about the breadth... (read 870 more words →)
What you are saying about your prior for "Actually non-human intelligence (NHI)" being tiny closely agrees with what I said about the community being too certain in its ontology. You have to keep in mind that your choice of prior by default assumes that your ontology is not wrong. While I agree at surface level with Eliezer's statements, I think this kind of reasoning is used to reject otherwise strong evidence before even thinking about it enough to realize it is strong evidence.
Having a look at your link, I see you give 3% to the probability that serious politicians would propose the UAP disclosure act if NHI did actually exist. I'm really... (read more)
TL;DR: A recently proposed (7/13/2023) bipartisan amendment to the NDAA for 2024, with senate majority leader Chuck Schumer as its first sponsor and with the aim of declassifying documents related to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). It explicitly defines UAPs as pertaining to objects exhibiting "performance characteristics and properties not previously known to be achievable based upon commonly accepted physical principles" such as, among other things, "instantaneous acceleration absent apparent inertia", "transmedium travel" and "positive lift contrary to known aerodynamic principles". It takes care to separate these from "temporarily non-attributed objects" with prosaic explanations. The terms "Non-human intelligence" and "Technologies of unknown origin" are explicitly defined and encountered multiple times throughout the text.... (read 5866 more words →)
Could you expand upon your points in the second-to-last paragraph? I feel there are a lot of interesting thoughts leading to these conclusions, but it's not immediately clear to me what they are.