All of exmateriae's Comments + Replies

this is near free money

That's a 12.5% return on 9 months. That's pretty good but calling this "near free money" when you have to put up 25k to get it...

The payback might be lower if I put this on the stock market but if I'm wrong there, there's 99% chance that's only on when the lowest point was or how fast it will recover. I have to wait a bit longer to get 3k out of it but I still own something. Here, you lose, you lose everything.

Still, congrats on putting your money where your mouth is, I'd be curious to see if someone takes you up on it and how you op... (read more)

I was very disappointed with perplexity DR, it has the same name but it's definitely not the same product as OAI's DR. 

Interesting, made me think about Pantone Color of the Year.

if a place says it's "scent-free"

I never heard of that, do you have examples?

I usually do 3 sprays but not directly on me, I go through the "cloud" of perfume. Should I go down to 2?

Metaculus has a lot of those forecasts, for instance in those groups: 

• AI Demonstrations https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/ai-demonstrations/
• AGI Outcomes https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/agi-horizons/
• Chinese AI Chips https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/chinese-ai-chips/
• AI Safety https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/ai-safety/

To add to this, I'm a forecaster on metaculus and I can now do dozens if not hundred of poisson/monte carlo/ets simulations every hour when before I often needed the hour to do two or three because I had to do small tweaks that took me quite some time before and that I now delegate to AI. I learned python a year ago but clearly I'm a newbie, it has changed my capabilities significantly.

Thanks for doing these again

I did not see it in your post but there is a relevant question on Metaculus : https://www.metaculus.com/questions/20541/ai-resolving-questions-on-metaculus/%7D/ 

I'm at 66% for 2030, 96% for 2040

To avoid shorts/reels etc I use ScreenZen. I'm allowed to use all of YouTube and Instagram with no issues except for the short videos where I receive a special message that I can bypass but then my 100 days streak would be broken so... Yes I used my achievements addiction to force myself out of Reels/shorts.

Depending on how far gone you are it may not be enough but I found that this was great because it gave more control, for instance you can simply delete all shorts from the youtube interface iirc. 

I thought you said he was very close to the maximum he could do? English is a second language so maybe I misunderstood something. Also, only my first paragraph is really related to the quote, the rest is more of a free flow of what I think

while, at the same time, the reach of his actions and opinions have also maximized

I disagree. Companies will become complacent and stagnant very fast if leadership is not going hard against it. I'm not sure I'd like to work for him but my impression is that he really pushes his teams to go for more faster and results have shown up. I'm not sure "dumb"(at first look) ideas like Mechazilla would exist without him being willing to try cool things.

I'm on the fence for X, there have been good changes and the site feels a bit less like an echo chamber but there ... (read more)

I am far from being a model user as I am not a very organized person but having everything in the same place has allowed me to actually find things much more easily because the search is quite good. Not perfect but much better than what Google offers in Docs or Keep for instance. The app itself is very versatile but there are many plugins that will allow you to tailor your experience in the exact way you need it.

I try to update or create a new note as soon as possible because I forget pretty fast. I have a few notes made exactly for the purpose of storing ... (read more)

I use Obsidian. It's a note taking/note making software using almost only Markdown syntax. It is very malleable to your use but mostly relies on a linking system that kinda makes it a wiki for your knowledge.

The title of your post has lived rent-free in my head for three years but I think that's when I discovered Metaculus so thank you I guess.

Love the drawings! I feel like more drawings would make this community easier to understand to outsiders.

I'm guilty of n°3 when people defend some hype products while saying untrue things about how they are better than the competition. Obvious example about Apple's products "doing something no other phone does" when the functionality in question was introduced 7 years ago on Android. Not exactly the same since they do not frame it as preference but try to rationalize it but I'll remember this next time to be nicer.

I remember reading about SAD treatment by lumens in Inadequate Equilibria, though I did not finish the book.

Thanks for making this clearer, I had misunderstood this indeed. I'm still very much not a fan of the idea of "switching votes", but I guess that's not much different from some alliances and other shenanigans that happen during elections.

I'm not american so I have no skin in the game.

Isn't one of the democrat's main arguments that Trump is a danger to democracy and won't respect basic duties ? Supporting cheating seems a bit hypocritical.

Edit : This is not actually cheating, I had misunderstood it. Still, not much of a fan of such ideas.

With metaculus I do write my confidence in pretty much every forecast that I make. It has made this better. But even then, when coming back to long term forecasts, I sometimes find myself stunned by my specific %, likely forgetting some of the informations that brought me to that forecast in the first place.

I could not read everything yet, sorry for that but I wanted to contribute on one of your points. I'm not certain AI will be bad for languages, it could resurrect some of them easily if they have been recorded in some way and could help people maintain their skills in less used languages. It could teach people those languages.

I'm not convinced Trump will succeed and I'm worried by what he would be ok with to reach peace but it is true that he made happen things that seemed unlikely (no war, leaving Afghanistan, korea meeting), nevermind if this meant negotiating with terrible people.

So if you don't care about Ukraine and want the war to stop, I'm also under the impression that Trump is your best shot.

I was scared that by clicking on the red button I was going to launch nukes... so I did not hit it. Now I know that next year I will click.

Well, maybe.

Edit : I should have read more carefully.

We have this forecast on Metaculus that is exactly about such an AI, it would be interesting to try to resolve it : https://www.metaculus.com/questions/7024/ai-to-beat-humans-on-metaculus/

I was quite pessimistic (for humans) so this would confirm it but I'll wait a bit for more infos and tests before thinking it's over.

It's a pity that you stopped doing these

Sure, if you want to go hands free or mobile you might talk to your phone or computer, but typing is just better than speaking, and a mouse is more precise than a gesture, and AI won’t change that.

This is true for people here but I'm not sure it's necessarily true for the world at large considering the average typing speed. Most people would find it much easier to speak to their computer than type to it. (and they would be able to exchange much faster)

Thanks for the detailed and clear answer! I mostly agree with you.

Each regulation has a cost.  Of course privacy and sensitive data protection is a nice to have, but is it worth the marginal cost it imposes?  Or another way to see it:  When you have a large number of costly regulations, you raise the cost to the point that the EU tech industry underperforms:

There is a clear difference in mindset like you said. Europe is less inclined towards entrepreneurship and more towards a powerful state that regulates the economy. I won't lie, I am ofte... (read more)

GDPR is clearly not perfect but this incessant bashing is tiring. Not everything has to be about being more productive. Privacy and sensitive data protection matters. I find it kind of sad to have to say those things when it's been a year of constant warnings about the future dangers of AIs.

It's easier to not care about it when half the companies leeching data are US based but from what I read about the TikTok ban, as soon as it's not an american company, then it's a big problem. The EU cannot rely on the US (and US companies) to care about them or be very reliable (and have proven that time and time again).

I feel you, I'm a lawyer in France in civil law and people will deform so many things that you will learn about so late in the process that it gets very difficult (if possible at all) to backtrack.

I'm coming very late to this but it is also possible that the people forecasting on each of the questions are noticeably different and they have different ideas about AI. Maybe some just don't know about the other questions. It won't explain everything but it could be a factor.

Also, it is difficult to keep all your forecasts up to date. You can forget.

I feel like theses posts get less likes than before (and I often forget to like them) but they really are great to keep up with what's happening. Thanks for doing it!

Thanks for sharing this view.

I can relate to you on some aspects. I am not feeling depressed at all but I'm a bit scared that I was born too early to really benefit from AGI. 

This perspective ignores future generations, which is admittedly a weakness. However, prioritizing future generations above oneself and one's loved ones is psychologically hard.

Do you have children? I don't but I am under the impression that people who do say that this changes a bit once you have children. (because of soon to be born grandchildren I guess?)

95% was most likely an overexaggeration but that was to underline the main idea that overall if all of your recipes need several ingredients that will be used in none of the other recipes, it's much harder to make a restaurant work.

When dining in, I suppose yes, because we wouldn't think of the other dishes as Italian then - I don't make an 'Italian steak' it's just a steak, etc. 

Indeed, I may be biased but many "italian things" do feel like normal things were "italian" has been added to it because they have a great cooking culture. Especially among the appetizers, where the spanish do the same, incorporating every small dish under the tapas umbrella

I live in the south so I won't be able to but my main advices would be to avoid eating near touristic places where very average stuff will be sold at a premium (Eiffel Tower, arc de triomphe for instance) and to go for places that look nice but not too fancy, especially if you want something closer to a "comfort food" feeling. Fancy places can have extremely good food but like Zvi said it, the ambiance can be mediocre and/or impersonal. Maybe ask parisians about the places where they would bring their friends for a good dinner? (and that you would like to try french specialties in some of them :) )

Exactly, the quality rules in the EU sometimes feel too strict but a few weeks in the US and I saw the difference. The compounding effect of food on your health is huge.

Salads and pasta salads on the "healthy" side. There are a lot of vegetables in the burgers, almost no option with only meat in it.

But it's not so much that than the differences in portion sizes and calories. There are legal limits to added sugar, salt or fat and to how much calories you can put in a meal. It's way lower than what you can find in the US.

Unlimited sodas are forbidden in France(Europe maybe ?) + they have way less sugar than in the US (+they are even cut a bit more in fast foods) There must be a few other stuff but out of my head they are the main ones.

Despite that we still have obesity (~23% which is kind of average today but still bad)

100%! I have seen abroad varieties of pastries that I have never seen in France (often weird ones) and I did not understand why but this actually makes it sense, if 50% of what you sell is "croissant with XYZ" it's an easier sell. Can't believe I did not get that before

But when you go to a chinese place that's what you expect right ? Overall, even italian food is not as restricted as my comment makes it look but when you go to an italian restaurant you expect pasta and pizza

Cuisines are not limited to what is sold abroad as X cuisine but it's easier to sell when customers can know pretty much what to expect. That's not doable with french food, which is what I was trying to say

Your argument is sound but I think it's actually because of its diversity in the base foods. Pasta and pizza is 95% of italian food, rice and noodles are the base of 80% of chinese/japanese/korean food, etc... In french cuisine, there is no base that is often used so you must have a lot of different ingredients. Not the best thing when you operate at "small scale" (when you're not very expensive or cheesecake factory)

I don't know if french restaurants are pretentious outside of france, but that looks more like a parisian problem than a french one.

I was also surprised to see it so low.

French here.

Paris is an island in France, they are completely different from the rest of the country. We know it, they know it (and they want us to know it) and we don't like each others that much. Several of the experiences you talk about are typical parisian bullshit that would almost never happen elsewhere. About the "fancy" experience you describe, I'd say it's far from the majority and most restaurants would on the contrary be "à la bonne franquette" especially outside of Paris.

Really when you said this, I was thinking about 90% of my food experience ... (read more)

I regularly find myself in situations where I want to convince people that AI safety is important but I have very little time before they lose interest. If you had one minute to convince someone with no or almost no previous knowledge, how would you do it ? (I have considered printing eliezer's tweet about nuclear)

Thank you for this. I had seen a few things but I had missed a lot. I have been getting more concerned by the day since the beginning of the year...

Thank you, I will show this to a few people! (I'm at 12%...)

P.S: I liked the final statement around 100%

Complete agreement, I should have started way earlier to dress better (and I started 10 years ago at 19!). If you're French, bonnegueule.fr is how I learned to dress nicely. I'm sure there are good websites in every country.

Update : I didn't completely get your (gwern) answer at first but after I read eliezer's post it made more sense, I think I was missing basic information about the topic to fully get it. Your explanation really added something to the original post since it was tailored to the subject I was wondering about.

Thanks!

Thanks for the answer and the link ! I'll go read group selection tomorrow.