All of jam_brand's Comments + Replies

Here's a brand new assessment that was just released (July 17): https://futureoflife.org/ai-safety-index-summer-2025/

4Gunnar_Zarncke
Yes! That's the one. Thank you.

FYI the link for preordering currently contains two concatenated instances of the URL (which fails relatively gracefully, though requires an extra click since it takes you to the top of the site for the book -- which thankfully then conveniently also contains a link to the preorder section -- rather than directly to the preorder section itself).

2Malo
Huh, I thought I fixed this. Thanks for flagging, will ensure I fix now.

Contrary to what you might infer from the initial spate of downvotes, it doesn't strike me as necessarily nuts that a project of this kind could have value and so I applaud the effort, though unfortunately this first video does leave a fair bit to be desired methinks. At a minimum, one would hope that the audio isn't actually somehow less comprehensible than the original, yet in comparing the beginnings as well as skipping to where Eliezer begins speaking, I find that both seem significantly more effortful to parse (and so then also have the negative side-... (read more)

2Richard_Kennaway
What am I looking at here? I was surprised by the downvotes, and wondered if the problem was that the whole thing was AI synthesized. However, it seems to be genuine, the original video being this. Indeed the sound is better (but still bad), and I find both videos pretty unendurable to watch with all the ums and ers and retakes. If I had been there I believe I would have found the live performance little better. This is from the automatic transcription (from 2:12), and even leaving aside the transcription errors it's...it's... And I wish Connor Leahy would stop tapping his foot up and down, especially when someone else is speaking.

I've had similar issues downstream of what I'd somehow failed to realize was a clinically-significant level of anxiety, so that's something to maybe consider checking into.

Thanks. For people that aren't likely to watch, I imagine it might also be worth saying he reports his view as being that we're in an arms race we can't opt out of (and that he's changed his mind regarding -- I think -- the overall appropriateness of such a race, though from what to what I'm not sure) due to insufficient political sanity and part of what constitutes sanity, he says, would be the US and China being able to create a climate whereby we don't fear each other, though it's not totally obvious whether he thinks a sufficient condition for the race... (read more)

0Noah Birnbaum
Makes sense. Good clarification! 

Interesting ending to the latest Veritasium video today. It asks "What if all the world's biggest problems have the same solution?" and spends nearly all its time talking about AlphaFold and how AI is starting to be able to accelerate areas of research by literal decades almost overnight. Superficially this will no doubt sound positive to many people, but then -- with his final words -- he slips in the following: "This sounds like an amazing future... as long as the AI doesn't take over and destroy us all first."

I remember someone here perhaps a year ago had suggested the 1965 flick Flight Of The Phoenix and were trying to maybe get some kind of online rationalist movie club off the ground, though seems perhaps they've deleted their post since searching just now didn't seem to turn it up.

Here's an example for you: I used to turn the faucet on while going to the bathroom, thinking it was due simply to having a preference for somewhat-masking the sound of my elimination habits from my housemates, then one day I walked into the bathroom listening to something-or-other via earphones and forgetting to turn the faucet on only to realize about halfway through that apparently I actually didn't much care about such masking, previously being able to hear myself just seemed to trigger some minor anxiety about it I'd failed to recognize, though its ab... (read more)

6Viliam
I have read that entire thread, and... it is hard to say something coherent in reply, and I am probably missing a lot of context... but it seems to me that bad things are happening, but also that people complaining about them make wrong conclusions (mostly in style: I see something bad happening, so I point at the most visible thing nearby and say: this is the cause of the bad things happening). Makes me wonder, what would have happened if instead of living on the opposite side of the planet, I lived in the middle of all that chaos. Would I be a part of the insanity? Or a lonely voice of reason? Or just a random low-status guy whose opinion is irrelevant because no one listens to it and no one is going to remember it anyway? (Probably the last one.) Basically, it confuses me when people point at things I consider good, and call them causes of things that I consider obviously bad and stupid. What is the proper lesson to take here? Maybe I am the stupid one, unable to see the obvious causality, and protected from my own stupidity by being far away from where important things happen. Or maybe other people are simply doing things wrong. I keep dreaming about having a rationalist group with more than five members in my country, but if my wishes came true, would that automatically mean also getting our local version of Zizians/Leverage/etc.? Do these things happen automatically as a consequence of trying to be rational, or did just someone accidentally build the Bay Area community on top of an ancient Indian burial ground? ...but that's basically what this article is about. The rationalist scene in Vienna is also sane, as far as I know. We need more data points from other cities. Or maybe it's something unrelated to "antibodies", like the people in Bay Area taking an order of magnitude more drugs than people anywhere else, and everything else is just downstream of this. (Or, from another perspective, perhaps "don't take drugs just because some guys who call themselv

Before I read the aphoristic three-word reply to you from Richard Kennaway (admittedly a likely even clearer-cut way to indicate the following sentiment), I was thinking that to downplay any unintended implications about the magnitude of your probabilities that you could maybe say something about your tracking being for mundane-vigilance or intermittent-map-maintenance or routine-reality-syncing / -surveying / -sampling reasons.

For any audience you anticipate familiarity with this essay though, another idea might be to use a version of something like:

"The ... (read more)

While we're on the topic of amending standard Mafia, I suppose I'll also mention that implementing Robin Hanson's EquaTalk might make for an interesting game as well.

The first lecture at this link and accompanying handout from UChicago's (now-retired) writing-program director, Larry McEnerney, has come up here on a number of occasions.

Additionally, I imagine you'll be able to unearth some good stuff perusing LW's writing tag.

Since you've not mentioned a specific brand, to make it potentially even easier for people to grab something they might like I suppose I'll go ahead and link to the following (which appeared many moons ago in a product-recommendation post on SSC), though note it's a bit less sugary than the one above, i.e. just 7g/Tbsp: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CMGRNAK

Here's a video

It's also written up on Cognitive Revolution's substack for those that prefer text.

clicked first relative to receiving are the same person! And also that person is from the majority group

A majority member being the initial clicker also isn't terribly surprising because a group being larger means one-or-more of any given sort of person -- in this case, a quick-responder-type -- is likelier to crop up among them.

A small extra detail not mentioned: the end of the linked URL is "unilateralism=true".

Also perhaps of interest might be this discussion from the SSC subreddit awhile back where someone detailed their pro-Bigfoot case.

2leerylizard
I'm the OP of that bigfoot discussion on r/ssc. My views haven't substantially changed on that subject. I agree with the great-grandparent that aliens being real is an enormously bigger change from the standard worldview than bigfoot being real. I give < 10% likelihood to these UAPs being genuine aliens as stereotypically imagined, and < 50% likelihood of being some significant scientific update (e.g. weather phenomenon, spoofing technology). However, assuming actual aliens in spaceships were here and trying halfheartedly to hide from us, I would expect the photo and video evidence to be about as crap as it is. So I agree with the conclusion of this OP, but disagree with the rationale. Edit 19-JUN-2023: Upon reflection, I think assigning <10% likelihood is overconfident of me. I realized this when I read the recent post asking for UAP bets https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t5W87hQF5gKyTofQB/ufo-betting-put-up-or-shut-up and thought about the real reasons why I wouldn't take the bet.

Serious question: would something originating adjacently from a separate Everett branch count?

(sillier-though-hopefully-not-counterproductive question: since your final statement especially would, I think, often seem to go without saying, its "needless" inclusion actually strikes me as probably-not-but-still-hypothetically-maybe worrisome -- surely you're not intending to imply that's the only recourse allowed for being denied one's winning lottery ticket? [or perhaps my own asking is needless since someone deciding to be a jerk and not wanting to pay could simply use such agreed-upon discretion to "fairly" declare themselves the winner anyways, in which case: sorry for the derail!])

8lsusr
Nope. That's a separate bet. I'd happily bet against that (given good enough terms to overcome friction), but that's still originating from Earth. Yes, I am implying that it's the only recourse allowed. Doing otherwise exposes me to asymmetric litigation risk, due to the extreme asymmetry of the bet amounts. I believe reputation is a sufficient motivator, given how much effort I've spend accumulating reputation on this website.

("Halt, Melt, and Catch Fire" is in a few posts in the Coming of Age sequence)

Somewhat similar to you I've thought of the second group as "Vroomers", though Eliezer's talk of cursed bananas has amusingly brought "Sunnysiders" to mind for me as well.

3Zvi
Tyler Cowen used "Doers" in an email and I'm definitely considering that. Short, effective, clear, non-offensive. It's not symmetrical with Doomers though.

I can't vouch for this personally and don't even recall the source (always a great way to start advice...), but I remember reading once that a pinch of sugar sublingually with a touch of salt might also help for quickly returning to sleep.

The "Borderline" icon currently being a balance is something I most naturally interpret as "balanced fairly", whereas a similar-ish alternative -- open hands gesturing up & down -- reads more like "iffy" to me and might better communicate the concept. Here's a simultaneously too complex and too crude mockup based on https://thenounproject.com/icon/hand-disinfection-3819834/ :

A similar idea to indicate that something might be kind of a toss-up (which at first blush strikes me as less good than palms balancing, yet maybe better than the icon already in u... (read more)

I'm surprised to see a "Wrong" icon as a counterpart to "Verified" and not something like "Citation Needed / Requested" or something else that solicits information / evidence.

1ProgramCrafter
I think that's reaction for "tried to verify the fact and found out the opposite".

Using a plain heart to express empathy seems easier to confuse with "I love this" than seems ideal. Here are a few other options that seemed potentially appealing after looking through results at The Noun Project for "Empathy" and "Hug":

https://thenounproject.com/icon/take-care-4694299/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/hug-4400944/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/heartbeat-977219/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/love-4939234/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/hug-4401677/

2localdeity
Indeed, I've seen several cases recently in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aW288uWABwTruBmgF/  where people have used the "Empathy" react in a way that makes much more sense if I interpret it as "heart symbol" than as "empathy".

I think "Muddled" unfortunately seems easier to naturally interpret in an accusatory way, so something else indicating "this was hard for me to see / wasn't clear to me" might work better. My initial thought was to maybe use "Foggy" as a metaphor (as in, "there might be something there, but I'm having a hard time seeing it"). I suppose something with a lighthouse probably looks more like "a beacon of clarity", though here are some other possible Hazy / Cloudy things:

https://thenounproject.com/icon/cloudy-day-3240714/

https://thenounproject.com/icon/night-fo... (read more)

"Strawman" seems like it might be kind of niche, so I went on a quest looking for something more indicative of "I find this to be misleading / misrepresentative" before realizing this apparently already exists. I can't say I really have any issue with the one already in use, but since there seems to be lots of ways to approach this and I already have several at hand, here's a multitude of alternatives just in case any seem especially resonant. Themes depicted below include loss of signal or mutations in translation, frames being warped or distorted or stuf... (read more)

I prefer this as a default as well since it's information-preserving and the most common reactions will often cluster more-leftward anyway.

I agree and also I wanted to leave a thanks-react for making that submission, but apparently am short of the requisite karma threshold, so... thanks! :)

This seems right to me since e.g. if someone were to use anti-excitement to indicate "this is draining" there'd then be an issue of how someone else might see this and then wonder how best to express they think it's actually pretty neutral rather than draining (since, while excitement cancels out anti-excitement, indicating excitement itself wouldn't be truth-tracking in this case).

Another hybrid approach if you have multiple substantive comments is to silo each of them in their own reply to a parent comment you've made to serve as an anchor point to / index for your various thoughts. This also has the nice side effect of still allowing separate voting on each of your points as well as (I think) enabling them, when quoting the OP, to potentially each be shown as an optimally-positioned side-comment.

I don't have a direct answer for you, though I imagine the resource mentioned at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MKvtmNGCtwNqc44qm/announcing-aisafety-training might well turn up what you're looking for :)

Emoji: Minor Gripe Edition 👺🤡🐉

(I thought to append an even gaudier headlining tag, but don't have the heart—if though, by the way, you don't know what's so gaudy about it [and/or already don't reckon you much care about such a gripe] and simultaneously also don't love that I've surreptitiously stolen the focus of your eyeballs for such a matter, well... maybe we're in more agreement than you think! ♥)

A couple things I think I'd enjoy seeing regarding mini-ideogram usage here, though happy to know others' opinions as well:

I'd love if the default text-col... (read more)

I don't know how promising this might be, but I saw the following yesterday via the Bountied Rationality facebook group after someone else posted an ad regarding possibly getting Paxlovid shipped to China: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3775373-pfizer-signs-deal-to-sell-paxlovid-in-china-as-covid-cases-climb-report/

No specific suggestions other than maybe to consider perusing the sleep tag here and perhaps this article from the EA Forum last year. Best of luck with your experiment! :)

1Willa
Thanks! I'm familiar with some of the items in the sleep tag, especially Guzey's writings about sleep, those were good. Checking out the EA Forum article and more things from the sleep tag tomorrow or Sunday. I appreciate the well wishes :)

Also along these lines, perhaps contrasting the flicker fusion rates of different species could be illustrative as well. Here's a 30-second video displaying the relative perceptions of a handful of species side by side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA--1YoXHIQ . Additionally, a short section from 10:22 - 10:43 of this other video that incorporates time-stretched audio of birdcalls is fairly evocative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvg242U2YfQ .

As far as pithy new verbiage goes, here's a couple possibilities: one might say the can't-stand-this suffering results from being abruptly "dreadpilled" or "sunderstruck".

I wonder if a more influential attribution might be https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-transcendence-looks-at-the-implications-of-artificial-intelligence-but-are-we-taking-ai-seriously-enough-9313474.html since, in addition to Stuart Russell, it also lists Stephen Hawking, Max Tegmark, and Frank Wilczek on the byline.

For policymakers: "Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all."

— Stephen Hawking, Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, and Frank Wilczek (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-transcendence-looks-at-the-implications-of-artificial-intelligence-but-are-we-taking-ai-seriously-enough-9313474.html)

For policymakers: "[AGI] could spell the end of the human race. […] it would […] redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans […] couldn't compete and would be superseded."

— Stephen Hawking (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30290540)

For policymakers: "If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that will outperform humans."

— Stephen Hawking (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/stephen-hawking-interview-alien-life-climate-change-donald-trump)

Curious about this as well since neither of these recently-updated articles from the NYTimes-owned (meta)review site The Wirecutter mention being able to find any bone-conduction headphones they liked.

These were my first ideas as well, albeit in reverse order ;) Having thought a bit more now, I might prefer yet another option -- what about "twirling"? (like "in circles" or "your hair")

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