All of eigen's Comments + Replies

eigen5-1

I disagree extremely. This is the best moment of my life. I am at the best point of my career (powered by o1 and o3 research previews is allowing me to reach the best solutions I couldn't imagine reaching on my own, much less in such short time) it has helped me create two companies now completely different from my career (I have optimized hydroponic setups and cultivation of mushrooms purely with o1-pro to incredible levels.) My father, a doctor, tells me his patients are better than ever only because his use of o1, doctors are using it in their meetings ... (read more)

eigen40

I'm curious to know for anyone that has read a lot of Yudkowsky's and Scott Alexander's writings (I read them for entertainment even) how are they feeling about the advancements of AI -- all happening so fast and in such magnitude.

5Eli Tyre
Read ~all the sequences. Read all of SSC (don't keep up with ACX). Pessimistic about survival, but attempting to be aggresively open-minded about what will happen instead of confirmation biasing my views from 2015. 
7Seth Herd
Yudkowsky's views can now be found mostly on Twitter. He is very pessimistic, for reasons described in detail in his List of Lethalities and better summarized by Zvi. I'm curious about Alexander's current views - I don't keep up on Astral Codex Ten. To me it seems that Yudkowsky's reasons for pessimism are all good ones, but do not stack up to nearly the 99%+ p(doom) he's espoused. I've attempted to capture why that is in essentially all of my posts, but in brief form in Cruxes of disagreement on alignment difficulty, The (partial) fallacy of dumb superintelligence and in a little more detail on one important point of disagreement in Conflating value alignment and intent alignment is causing confusion. None of those address one of his important reasons for pessimism: humans have so far shown themselves to be just terrible at taking the dangers of AGI and the difficulties of alignment seriously. Here I think EY is too pessimistic; humans are short-sighted and argumentative as hell, but they are capable of taking serious issues seriously when they're staring them in the face. Attitudes will change when AI is obviously important, and our likely timelines are long enough for that to make at least some difference.
eigen30

The last few weeks I felt the opposite of this. I kind of go back and forth on thinking they are plateauing and then I get surprised with the new Sonnet version or o1-preview. I also experiment with my own prompting a lot.

1Cole Wyeth
I've noticed occasional surprises in that direction, but none of them seem to shake out into utility for me.
eigen1-1

Myself, I feel like every two weeks or so we see this kind of post with similar style to Eliezer's so it feels repetitive... but I may be wrong though, just my reaction after seeing that post.

eigen5-3

I'm kind of against it. There's a line and I draw it there, it's just too much power waiting to fall in a bad actor's hand...

eigen00

May you possibly be underestimating how hard it is to build a startup?

eigen20

Hey, I think you should also consider how the out-of-nowhere narrative-breaking nature of COVID. Which also happened after you wrote this. It's not necessarily a proof that the narrative can "break," but it sure is an example.

And, while I think I read the sequences way longer than 4 years ago, if I remember something it gave me is a sense of "everything can change very, very fast."

eigen20

Thank you for being a temporary asshole, that is a great comment. Does it occur to you how it can be done? 

 

the first prediction market about this was in 8 november on polymarket and surprisingly it was 94 percent probability on them not halting withdrawals 

3dkirmani
Yes. From the same comment: And: I have since updated against hypotheses that it is possible to achieve anything of consequence via legislation. Also, now that the political goodwill and funding potential of FTX has been eliminated, the legislative path is even more implausible. Therefore, the best plan is to build a serious prediction market on the Ethereum blockchain, and rely on reputation systems (think Ebay star ratings) to incentivize trustworthy market arbitration.
eigen1-2

Magic not needed... someone sees that SBF offers 3 billion to buy a piece of twitter, gets spooked and aggregates it on the prediction market -> this raises the probability that it's doing something shady (then any other assessment will be aggregated) now when FTX offers EA some money, we know the probability of them doing something shady... have some info to make a better decision (I noticed Scott Alexander writing about this)

1Ape in the coat
If this sort of evidence wasn't enough to significantly drop the prices of FTT token on the financial market why would it be enough to significantly drop the confidence in the company on prediction market?  Regular stock markets are already extremely liquid prediction markets for the trust in the companies. 
eigen44

I don't think it's quite a mystery as you think... if you do the same overleveraged high stakes bet and you come out winning ten out of ten times, it's likely you will continue doing it (this is the nature of a ponzi scheme.) I think they could have easily find investors if they could have sustained the bank run and prevent the balance sheet leak.

The latter, I think, is the real mystery. 

SBF probably knew at all times the dollar value size of a bank-run he could sustain until having to forcedly lock withdrawals, plus which whales could dump FTT at any... (read more)

eigen40

hehe Inadequate Equilibria is one of my favorite books ever, so I'm really glad that this study came up. It proves not only the SAD-specific section of the book, but the overall point. 

1kave
Doesn't this study find that LOTS OF LIGHT works about as well as SAD boxes? Restricting to the 6 datapoints at or above 2,000 lux (the figure mentioned in inadequate equilibria) does seem to give a stronger average response, but I've not tried to figure out whether it's well-powered enough in the 6 datapoint regime
Answer by eigen94

I would recommend to only focus on the object-level problem you're trying to solve.

For example: 

  • for programming, things like more monitors, a better IDE (or extensions, knowing how to navigate it by traveling back and forward, having a section with last opened files, last refactored functions, etc...) will help.
  • for conversations, you can apply some heuristics at different points of the conversation: what are talking about again? what did they mention? are we at the midpoint, ending, etc...
     

In mathematics, notation is basically a solution to the s... (read more)

1Nicholas / Heather Kross
Can confirm about the use of notation. Then it becomes learning/interpreting it (including in different contexts). Something not directly about working memory, but which I found unusually helpful in the realm of "low-level yet very general learning strats", is the advice here: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/advice-on-writing-papers/on-compilation-errors-in-mathematical-reading-and-how-to-resolve-them/
eigen40

This is an excerpt I want to highlight for everyone in this forum: 

> I agreed and said I was planning on doing it next Monday... anyway, 2 years later on <some> Monday I finally found the time.

Write your thinking, expand on your comments, even if it takes 2 years!! I think there will always be someone which will derive value from it.

eigen100

This type of honesty is very unheard of and I appreciate this a lot from you. Please, just take it step by step, I can assure that no one is out to get you and no one thinks that you're being childish; all the contrary, you are quite honest and smart in your account.

I feel like many members of this community have had very similar experiences, I know that Scott Alexander, Eliezer, lukeprog , and Aella for example have had to make massive updates to their beliefs, and they've luckily written about it. I think you would get value from reading their accounts.&... (read more)

1MSRayne
I'm glad to hear that. Actually, though, it's not necessarily best to call it "honesty", as that implies that it is somehow a virtuous act wherein I am fighting against the urge to be dishonest / hide the truth; in reality, it is far harder for me to hide my negative feelings than to show them, and I've been essentially venting which I-when-sane consider to be rather crass and immature. I-when-not-sane have a LONG history of emotional outbursts to strangers on the internet. Also, I-when-not-sane has possibly false beliefs about my overall health, some of which may be extreme exaggerations. I am really not sure. When I feel okay, as I do right now, the claim that I am in danger of self-harm for any reason seems ludicrous (because I-feeling-okay wouldn't do it, and cannot empathize at all with I-when-not-okay), and I begin to worry that I've been unconsciously emotionally manipulating people by mentioning it. It's such fun to be an incoherent agent whose beliefs and utility function regularly shift drastically for no good reason! :P
eigen51

I didn't read any bad intent from P on his/her comment. And I also got the general sense from the post: of looking for help rather than us telling how you can help LW, and I'm guessing that was the nature of the comment. 

I feel like you are quite a smart person (and still very young) but with the wrong assumptions that may be blocking a very meaningful self-development that is key to life (being independent/belonging to a group that cares about you) and I think you will be benefit greatly from trying to accomplish these goals however hard they may see... (read more)

3MSRayne
Thank you for your kind words. Both being independent, and to an even greater degree, belonging to a group that cares about me, feel extremely distant. The latter often feels impossible. I can't even clearly imagine what that would be like. When I try to, it seems stifling. I would have to care about them in turn! I would have to obey their group norms! And depressed-me sees only darkness and burden there, even though I have sometimes been around people and felt very good as a result - because depressed-me cannot remember or imagine feeling good at all, and doesn't understand it. These mood swings are very frustrating, as they drastically modify my sense of what is real, and make me a less trustworthy person. And yes, the fear of jobs is mostly about fear of doing things I've never done before. Same with college etc. It's very hard for me to try new things.
eigen70

There's also this video where Rhonda Patrick goes in depth about this 

7eigen
eigen70

The main chemical compound in broccolli and other cruciferous vegetables is sulforaphane, which has various health benefits, it's syntetized by an enzime called myrosinase which is very heat sensitive; this paper https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.ctrv.2010.01.002 has a table showing the different and optimal boiling temperatures.

7eigen
There's also this video where Rhonda Patrick goes in depth about this 
eigen50

Not to mention the fact that different foods have different cooking times, and if you overcook one (e.g. broccoli) you risk losing all nutritive properties.

0ChristianKl
Why do you believe that overcooking broccoli means that it loses all nutritive properties?
eigen*50

I think he was running the same algorithm he used when the LW community "failed" to buy bitcoin in bulk. Here's the response if you are interested in reading about a similar case as this.

eigen50

I didn't mean to discuss sentience here, I was looking more into the usefulness/interestingness of the conversation: the creativity/funnyness behind the responses. I think that everyone I've ever met and conversed for more than ~30 mins showed a very different quality to this conversation. This conversation didn't make me think/laugh ever the way conversing with a human does. 

For example, if they quote Les Miserable or any other book it would be via the way it relates to them on a personal level, a particular scene/a particular dialogue that has struc... (read more)

eigen50


“Universal love,” said the cactus person.

“Transcendent joy,” said the big green bat.

“Right,” I said. “I’m absolutely in favor of both those things. But before we go any further, could you tell me the two prime factors of 1,522,605,027, 922,533,360, 535,618,378, 132,637,429, 718,068,114, 961,380,688, 657,908,494 ,580,122,963, 258,952,897, 654,000,350, 692,006,139?

“Universal love,” said the cactus person.

“Transcendent joy,” said the big green bat.

 

Boom, LaMDA is turned off... so much for sentience.

eigen180

Someone ran the same questions through GPT and got similar responses back, so that's a point towards this not being a hoax, but just a sophisticated chat-bot. Still doesn't avoid editing or cherry-picking. 

Now, while I feel this article being a bit interesting, it's still missing the point of what would get me interested in the first place... if it has read Les Miserables and can draw conclusion on what it is about, what else has LaMDA read? Can it draw parallels with other novels? 

If it would had responded something like, "Actually... Les Misera... (read more)

2Viliam
Most likely, LaMDA has read someone's review of Les Miserables.

If it would had responded something like, "Actually... Les Miserables is plagiarized from so and so, you can find similar word-structure in this book..." something truly novel, or funny that would have made the case for sentience more than anything.

Do you think small children are not sentient? Or even just normal adults? 

I actually think most people would not be capable of writing sophisticted analyses of Les Miserables, but I still think they're sentient. My confidence in their sentience is almost entirely because I know their brain must be implement... (read more)

5eigen
  Boom, LaMDA is turned off... so much for sentience.
eigen30

Good comments, thanks for sharing both. 

Journal about your thought processes after solving each problem

create a way to 'get to' that memory somehow;

'd love to hear more about practical insights on how to get better at recalling + problem-solving.

1Ulisse Mini
I'll write some posts when I get stuff working, I feel a Sense That More Is Possible in this area, but I don't want to write stuff till I can at least say it works well for me.
eigen30

What books are you reading? Podcast you are watching? Talks/articles to recommend? 

4Yitz
Reading Infinite Jest for the first time—it’s really good! I wish I could describe it in a sentence or two, but the thing is so complex I’m not sure that I can.
eigen20

Prompt:

SOMEBODY BOILING A GOAT IN ITS MOTHER’S MILK.

eigen70

Hello, is there any update on this? Hopefully it doesn't die off!

eigen20

Awesome!!! Incredibly useful, thank you for taking the time, I'll take many of these.

eigen90

Great recommendations, thank you for making this post. I would add to the books section: Deep Work & So Good They Can't Ignore You (Cal Newport). It definitely led me to take a new perspective on what I spend time on.

eigen150

I would find it kind of disrespectful if someone called me gpt-3, maybe gpt-15...

2Ben Pace
(Agreed.)
eigen10

I would guess that the end project would be something closer to The Codex than the Sequences. And from reading Hanson a few times, there's an obvious thread that he weaves among many posts, but may be just a tad difficult to untangle. For one, I really enjoy his take on Prediction Markets

5Richard_Ngo
There's also this: reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/3sjtar/a_robin_hanson_primer
1[comment deleted]
eigen70

Awesome, some 2 years ago I was looking just for this. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9mXi6QNN7udsGcDYJ/eigen-s-shortform?commentId=uTEEJHSHLjyHXHsM2 I ended up reading his book, and really liked it. Excited to be one of the early readers of these. (I hope it's as good as The Codex recollection)

7eigen
So on this thread, as well, we have a post from @Richard_Ngo with some links https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SSkYeEpTrYMErtsfa/what-are-some-of-robin-hanson-s-best-posts 
eigen70

Unsong from Scott Alexander is a masterpiece. 

An unexplored land within LessWrong is where the objective world meets the narrative world. Science dedicates its time almost exclusively to objective facts (what is) but this is hardly our everyday life. The world we live is full of emotions, motivations, pain, and joy. This is the world of stories that constrain and inform action. Rather than brush it aside, it should be explored as an important puzzle piece in instrumental rationality (I think this is what Unsong is kind-of about, including other works in the category of the aptly named: "Rational Fiction.")

1eigen
The idea of ontological flexibility hints at this.
eigen10

Funny that you have your great LessWrong whale as I do, and that you recall that it may be from Wei Dai as well (while him not recalling)

 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X4nYiTLGxAkR2KLAP/?commentId=nS9vvTiDLZYow2KSK

eigen*60

One of the things that enticed me about LessWrong is a concrete and easy way to call someone a "rationalist," namely someone who has read the three books from the Library section (Sequences, HPMOR, and The Codex.) 

After that, the curated sequences and the concepts page. I just think is a wonderfully easy way to define concepts, and create a shared vocabulary while building on top of it. I hope that with time it gets expanded to encompass more books and sequences.

  • The term rationalist then falls short but this is how I easily can separate people and am sympathetic to those who want to change the name.
eigen30

A talk given by Rogen Penrose is apt here: The Problem of Modelling the Mathematical Mind. He tries to define how the mind of a sufficiently good mathematician may work with emphasis on parallelization of mathematical solutions. And an interesting book may be The Mathematician's Mind: The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field by Jacques Hadamard.

eigen40

Mathematician Richard Borcherds said in an interview that he does not have a great memory, that this allows him to come back to a mathematical problem and try solving it in a different way than he did before (because he does not remember how he solved it.)

eigen30

This is amazing. Incredible execution, it does not go unnoticed!

1spencerg
Thanks :)   Glad you think so!
eigen30

This is a really good comment. If you care to know more about his thinking, he has a book called, "hackers and painters" which I think sums up very well his views. But yes, it's a redistribution of wealth and power from strong people and bureaucrats to what he calls "nerds" as in people who know technology deeply and actually build things.

The idea of instrumental rationality touches at the edges of builders, and you need to if you ever so desire to act in the world.

eigen30

The heads of Government and the FDA don't work like you do. Who knows the incentives that they have? It's entirely possible that for them this is just a political play(moving chess pieces) that make sense for them while the well-being of the people take secondary place to a particular political move.

This wouldn't be the first thing that this happens in any kind of government agency, but, at any rate, it's too early to be skeptical. We need to see how this unfolds, may be the pausing don't last as much.

eigen20

This is a really interesting post. I wonder how implementable this is, it does touches the edges of collective action. Imagine a change.org petition for someone to read something and make a review of it, despite public interest it does miss the incentive structure for one who actually carries the task.

Going further, some people are tokenizing the hours of their day and selling them on the blockchain (this is too broad, but imagine a particular action being tokenized, where people can fund it through sheer interest and then someone like David Deutsch could claim it.) This does not seem so far-fetched to me.

eigen10

I don't think there's enough written about long-termism. You have a reader here if you ever decide to write something. I wonder as to where between those two school of thoughts you fall.

eigen20

As a side thought: One of the things I always sensed from this forum is a deep affinity for different ways of understanding things. So, not surprisingly, many converge and are enthralled by Bret Victor, though there are many (Nielsen, Matuschak, the web you linked, 3blue1brown, Jonathan Blow.) 

So I think that exploring different mediums can be and end on itself rather than just making visualizations to understand a given subject (I get a sense of that from your comment, and I hope you explore it further!) 

2Sigurd
Cheers for the encouragement! I share your intuition, it is what prompted me to post here. A quick sitewide search showed that Bret Victor's name has come up before in discussion on LW, but not as much as I would expect. Anyway I had totally missed Matuschak out of that list, so on the growing list of references he goes :)
eigen30

Welcome! 

I think the problem with visualization content is that is very time-intensive to make (let alone the difficulty.)  You should look at the manim library written in python from which 3blue1brown made his videos of Linear Algebra.

2Sigurd
Hey eigen, nice of you to say "hallo" Looking more into manim is on my list, I have been following 3b1b for years ( he had the best explanation of quaternions and partial differential equations by far ). Theres actually a community split-off established recently, which should be more user-friendly. Thanks for reconfirming that as a valuable resource. And yes, making visualisations is time-consuming. I think the effort put into writing your own tools-for-learning pays off in big ways however. Going through the Lectures without them is also time-intensive. I don't need to work my way through them fast anyways ;) My goal in making them would be to aid my learning first, and share my findings second (+ iterate with feedback) I guess. Here's another one of the list, perhaps a bit more doable: https://seeing-theory.brown.edu/
eigen30

Huh, I understand where you're coming from. Especially, this:

[...] a kidney stone increases my level of baseline fear

Since I did not consider it. It's completely possible to imagine a world where your baseline fear increases ever so slightly in a way that outweighs the fact of knowing what may be going on when it hits you.

But –though I concede your point– is your behavior someway modified, at any rate, given the fact that you may get hit by kidney stones? For example, say, analogizing with family history of high blood pressure, I wo... (read more)

4Isnasene
To elaborate on this a bit more, it's important to note that we humans only have a finite amount of attention -- there are only so many things that we can consciously be afraid of at any one time. In my world model, people in extreme pain are much more afraid that the pain isn't going to stop immediately than they are of the cause of the pain itself. The former fear basically renders the latter fear unnoticed. In this context, knowing the cause of the pain addresses very little fear and knowing how soon you're going to get drugs addresses a lot. In my case no. The main behavioral change I'm aware of for kidney stone prevention is eating less red meat. I was already vegetarian so this wasn't useful for me (and it's not useful for people who like meat enough that the minor kidney-stone-risk-reduction isn't worth it). It has been useful for my mom.
eigen50

I think that most of what I've gotten out of the Sequences is actually this. The act of noticing. I think it not only applies to shame, but to many more related internal conflicts.

In my experience, it's surprising the amount which we can learn by applying procedures such as the method you outline. Hopefully we get to see more about this.

eigen60

While I think, the Typical Mind Fallacy is strong with this one; the post does have some good bits. I messaged him privately my problems with it, but I up-voted since I think the post taps into something broader and good which I would like to read more about.

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