User Comment Replies

A Game About AI Alignment (& Meta-Ethics): What Are the Must Haves?

It would help to know what genre of game you are making. You talk about exposition, "We need to keep the exposition of these ideas short", and I would take this to the extreme if I were you. Show, don't tell. If players don't learn the concepts from the gameplay, then try game isn't about those concepts.

For example, if you want to teach players that ai optimism is not a good default and alignment is hard, give them a chance to do an alignment task or make alignment choices, in which there are optimistic options, that end badly. Or make a game that's almost... (read more)

1JonathanErhardt3y

We will post more when the game is announced, which should be in 2-3 weeks. For now I'm mostly interested in getting feedback on whether this way of setting the problem up is plausible and doesn't miss crucial elements, less about how to translate it into gameplay and digestible dialogue. Once the annoucement (including the teaser) is out I'll create a new post for concrete ideas on gameplay + dialogue.

Various Alignment Strategies (and how likely they are to work)

Gregviers3y20

Can we agree to stop writing phrases like this: "Not only do I not think that the Alignment Problem is impossible/hopelessly bogged-down, I think ..."? The three negatives are a semantic mess. Some of still using our wetware here for decoding prose.

Perhaps "Not only am I still hopeful about the alignment problem, but I think" or even "I don't think the alignment problem is hopelessly bogged-down, and I think..."

NFTs Are Probably Not Beanie Babies

Gregviers3y10

My understanding is that 'blockchains' are, today, pretty centralized, especially effectively (i.e. in practical ways that matter). Any particular 'blockchain' also seems possibly 'lost' (e.g. abandoned), 'made obsolete', etc.. Isn't there any inherent and inevitable 'social expense' that has to be continually made anyways?

Not really. The blockchains themselves are decentralized, but the applications built on top of them are centralized. To my buying a movie example, suppose I have an app on my SmartTV called "stream1" that lets me buy movies and register ... (read more)

1Kenny3y

Why would the relevant companies, i.e. movie studios, do that? They could do that now if they wanted to. But you seem to be claiming that the possibility of future parties 'honoring' NFTs, and NFTs issued by other parties, is exciting. I still don't understand why that's plausible. If anything, the visibility/legibility of NFTs makes me think this is MUCH less likely. The blockchain can't itself verify to anyone that the information it contains is true or accurate. I can imagine that Google would have alternate channels by which they could verify that a certain wallet is (or was) used by MIT for "minting their diplomas", but that has to be outside the blockchain (and thus subject to all of the standard security 'hacks'). But you seem to be assuming that companies/organizations will voluntarily 'honor' past purchases when that seems to be extremely unlikely to me. Why would future content hosts pay to provide access to something (e.g. bandwidth, hosting) that people purchased from someone else? I can imagine someone doing that as some kind of 'limited promotion' but I don't understand why everyone would do that (e.g. by default). I was thinking primarily about the 'other side', e.g. the university losing access to their wallet (or access to it otherwise being compromised, e.g. fraudulent diplomas being "minted").

NFTs Are Probably Not Beanie Babies

Gregviers3y20

So there are lots of situations where receipts are pretty important, but increasingly there is a push to have them be digitized, either because it's just more efficient or the asset itself is digital. For example, suppose you buy a movie through your smart TV.

The problem is these digital receipts tend to either be just downloadable PDFs - easily forged and effectively meaningless - or they're central databases, which are under the control of the party that owns the database. They can be revoked, lost, made obsolete, etc. Suppose the company that holds my d... (read more)

1Kenny3y

I'm confused as to how NFTs 'really' solve any of the problems you mention (or similar ones I can imagine). My understanding is that 'blockchains' are, today, pretty centralized, especially effectively (i.e. in practical ways that matter). Any particular 'blockchain' also seems possibly 'lost' (e.g. abandoned), 'made obsolete', etc.. Isn't there any inherent and inevitable 'social expense' that has to be continually made anyways? I don't think any current 'movie purchases' work like what you describe. It certainly seems like it matters as to whether any 'movie company' would be willing to offer movies for sales on the terms you seem to be implicitly assuming, e.g. be able to download a movie an unlimited number of times. Does – today – reasonable evidence of having purchased a movie, e.g. as a DVD or Blu-ray disc, serve as protection or a legal defense to later downloading it thru some other means? I don't think it does. I'm very skeptical that the companies that sell products like this would willingly offer terms like what you seem to have in mind, e.g. 'Pay us and then just torrent the movie whenever you want!'. This is the most interesting example, but I'm skeptical that even it would work that great. (I do admit I'm ignorant of even the gross technical details about how the example would work 'mechanically.) Is this resilient in the face of, e.g. losing access to whatever 'wallet' the NFT is associated with (on either 'side')? How would the person or organization requesting someone's diploma verify that the NFT was issued by the relevant college/university? Surely some kind of centralized database is still required, right? Wouldn't the entity requesting the invoice need to have some kind of 'whitelist' of entities that are approved to issue these NFTs? I'm not sure that this meaningfully improves anything. Without some kind of 'DRM' (which mostly doesn't, and probably can't work generally anyways), this just seems like a more convoluted way to 'paywall' a

NFTs Are Probably Not Beanie Babies

Gregviers3y30

This is my thought exactly. The digital Art NFTs that are selling now or a distraction.

NFTs are a decentralized receipt system which is totally awesome and which you cannot get rich off by collecting receipts.

1Kenny3y

I think maybe I'm a little less confused now? I'm still confused about why that is "totally awesome".

Gregviers4y40

Not an answer to your question, but in the Westminster system, the monarch serves this same purpose as well, since there can be no autocrat while the monarchy exists, and the monarch themself is almost assured to be less competent even than the elected leaders, and unlikely to be able to setup their own autocracy.

1[comment deleted]4y

Chess and cheap ways to check day to day variance in cognition

Gregviers4y20

I also play a few games of chess.com every morning and I have found it has the same use you describe.

Can someone help me understand the arrow of time?

Gregviers4y10

I read this book by Rovelli. It's supposed to be the best explanation available, but I still don't really get it.

In the end he suggests that entropy is why we can remember the past but not the future. I'm not sure that's it though.

Still a good read.

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/073521610X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_i_WS4HJZDE23GGEZ6MSQYK

1Shmi4y

There are no actionable predictions in his models, so they are mostly of aesthetic value.

LESSWRONG
LW

All of Gregviers's Comments + Replies