All of Benjamin Rachbach's Comments + Replies

I've been working on making Elicit search work better for reviews.  Would be curious for more detail on how Elicit failed here, if you'd like to share!

1jp
To be clear I don't know what I'm doing really. I do think that it failed to get the precise thing I was looking for though.

Yeah maybe -- I have a ton of calf problems in general when running, and I should probably see a running coach or something.

This pretty clearly did make the calf problems even worse than usual though :p

I tried the quick gait:
1. running with a backpack
2. running for exercise without a backpack

I think I'm sold on it for 1, seems better than the long, loping gait I previously used for backpack running

Not sold for 2, seems to wear out my calves quickly

3jefftk
Thanks for reporting back! I wonder if wearing out your calves quickly is just not being used to it yet? It wouldn't be surprising for it to use your muscles a bit differently and so be especially tiring in one area at first.

Other things that help you run with a backpack:

1. use both a hip strap and a sternum strap, and tighten both (especially the sternum strap) way tighter than you normally would for walking. In my experience this eliminates most of the jostling of the backpack relative to not using straps
2. instead of carrying water bottle on the outside, put it inside for better balance and no chance of it falling out
3. use a high-quality backpack with good padding, and probably with a rigid back, e.g. (https://smile.amazon.com/North-Face-Router-Meld-Black/dp/B092RJ8G86?sa-... (read more)

5jefftk
I think this one is actually quite big: I have followed basically none of your suggestions above, except that my backpack effectively has a rigid back because that's where my laptop is, and my backpack doesn't bounce around when I run. But on the way home yesterday I played with my gait some, and if I ran in a way more similar to what I see some other people doing it bounced a lot. So I think probably I've learned to run more smoothly? I also suspect running more smoothly is better for your body since there's less impact to absorb, but that's speculative.
2Logan Riggs
My backpack lamely doesn't have any of those straps.  The best one I've found is removing the left shoulder strap and gripping the backpack in e.g. my right arm.

Yep that helps a ton! (having tested it many times)

I'd be interested in joining for a Bay Area kickoff!

Test:

Elicit prediction (

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My distribution

My biggest differences with Rohin's prior distribution are:

1. I think that it's much more likely than he does that AGI researchers already agree with safety concerns

2. I think it's considerably more likely than he does that the majority of AGI researchers will never agree with safety concerns

These differences are explained more on my distribution and in my other comments.

The next step that I think would help the most to make my distribution better would be to do more research.

I thought about how I could most efficiently update my and Rohin’s views on this question.

My best ideas are:
1. Get information directly on this question. What can we learn from surveys of AI researchers or from public statements from AI researchers?

2. Get information on the question’s reference class. What can we learn about how researchers working on other emerging technologies that might have huge risks thought about those risks?

I did a bit of research/thinking on these, which provided a small update towards thinking that AGI researchers wi... (read more)

I answered the following subquestion to help me answer the overall question: “How likely is it that the condition Rohin specifies will not be met by 2100?

This could happen due to any of the following non-mutually exclusive reasons:

1. Global catastrophe before the condition is met that makes it so that people are no longer thinking about AI safety (e.g. human extinction or end of civilization): I think there's a 50% chance

2. Condition is met sometime after the timeframe (mostly, I'm imagining that AI progress is slower than I expect... (read more)

2Rohin Shah
Biggest difference is that I estimate the risk of this kind of global catastrophe before development of AGI and before 2100 to be much lower -- not sure exactly what but 10% seems like the right ballpark. But this did cause me to update towards having more probability on >2100.

I answered the following subquestion to help me answer the overall question: “How likely is it that the condition Rohin specified would already be met (if he went out and talked to the researchers today)?

Considerations that make it more likely:

1. The considerations identified in ricaz’s and Owain’s comments and their subcomments

2. The bar for understanding safety concerns (question 2 on the "survey") seems like it may be quite low. It seems to me that researchers entirely unfamiliar with safety could gain the required... (read more)

3Rohin Shah
I might have said an hour, but that seem qualitatively right. But that requires them 1. having the motivation to do so and 2. finding and reading exactly the right sources in a field with a thousand blog posts and not much explicit prioritization around them. I think both of these are huge considerations against this condition already being met. Hmm, good question. Probably a Yes? I might try to push on more clear hypotheticals (e.g. a team believes that such-and-such training run would produce AGI, should they do it?) to get a clearer answer.