All of Jensen's Comments + Replies

Jensen10

The ironic thing about the push for the 6 hour work week is that most white collar workers aren't even productive for half the time they are on the job. In addition, fixed effects models controlling for income and occupational status rises suggest that men may actually feel less happy working under 8 hours a week [1].

[1] - https://easthunter.substack.com/p/happiness-1

Jensen10

Other evidence I would add to the theory of the brain being a ULM is the existence of the g-factor, and the fact the general factor is one that explains the most variation in these cognitive tests. In addition - if you model human cognitive abilities as universal and specific, evolutionarily speaking it would make sense for the universal aspect to be under stronger selection than the specific domain. One exception to this could be language learning, which is important just for the sake of being able to communicate.

Jensen10

>Overall, I think the linked article reinforces my preexisting impression that Curtis Yarvin is a fool.

Given he was in the SMPY, I don't think intelligence is preventing him from understanding this issue, rather he seems to have approached the issue uncritically and overconfidently. In effect, not distinguishable from a fool.

Jensen-3-12

What's the LW take on Curtis Yarvin's article about AI safety?

The TL;DR is that Yarvin argues that an AGI system can only affect the virtual world, while humans can affect the virtual and physical world. The AGI/virtual world depends the physical world being able to provide it electricity (and potentially internet) to function, while the physical world is not nearly as dependent on the virtual world (though to an extent it is in practice, due to social systems and humans adopting these technologies). This produces a system analogous to slavery due to the p... (read more)

4Richard_Kennaway
I am sure that Andrew Wiles understands addition much better than me.
7jimrandomh
I think I'd focus more on qualitative differences rather than quantitative ones. Eg an AI system was able to solve protein folding, when humans couldn't despite great effort; this points at a future AI being able to design synthetic life and molecular nanotechnology, which is qualitatively different from anything humans can do. (Though, disjunctively, there are also plenty of paths through which speed alone is sufficient to take over the world, ie things that a time-dilated human would be able to do.) AFAICT this is the crux; Yarvin seems to think that superintelligence can't exist, which he argues through the lens of a series of considerations that would matter for an AGI that was as smart as a top-tier human, but which become minor speedbumps at most in the context as soon as intelligence advances any further than that. (Overall, I think the linked article reinforces my preexisting impression that Curtis Yarvin is a fool.)
Jensen11

No, I would agree with Logan that calling something "cringy" is mindkilly, since it instills a strong sense of defensiveness in the accused. I'm not even sure that the cringiness I felt was rooted in the fact the post seemed fake, but it was real nonetheless. For this particular post, it seems that the average lesswronger doesn't think it seems cringy but I doubt I am alone in thinking this way. 

Jensen10

Gwern's site design is extremely "rationalist" to me, though I don't see that as a bad thing. The site itself looks beautiful.

4gwern
Which is interesting, because Gwern .net / LW2 (there's a lot of overlap in their design) look little like Overcoming Bias does or LW1 did, and those were the heydays of rationalists. (In designing Gwern . net, I've tended to look to English Wikipedia & Art Deco, rather than anything one might associate with the Greco-Romans or the Logical Positivists - IMO, these websites do not look like Isotype or Bauhaus.)
Jensen1210

I think the interrater reliability of "cringyness" would be surprisingly high.

Ben Pace1911

Not a crux for me! What's "fashionable" amongst a group also has strong reliability, yet what's "fashionable" is something that radically changes very quickly and is primarily a fact about what the people have currently determined is fashionable, and not a fact about the piece of creative work that they're looking at.

Jensen2-34

Sorry, this is cringy. 

I would find this simply unfunny if it was the basics of black nationalist or nazi bodybuilder discourse, but lets face it, lesswrongers are not black nationalists or nazi bodybuilders. The aesthetics of an object should ideally reflect its true nature; the minimalistic and monochromatic design of this website reflects the nature of this movement well. This post, not so much. 

2Viliam
Aesthetics of rationality -- what an interesting concept! On one hand, it intuitively make sense. For example, obscurantist writing feels clearly anti-rationalist to me. On the other hand, it feels like using this perspective too much leads to Hollywood rationality. The rational color scheme is grayscale, the rational font is sans-serif, the rational music is a rhythmic march, the rational speech is stark and technical, the rational taste is Soylent, the rational sex position is missionary, the rational emotion is boredom, the rational writing style is textbook. Also, the objection against sounding like a black nationalist or a nazi bodybuilder sounds to me more like classism than like a concern about rationality. (Although, some classes are statistically more rational than others.) Should we uphold the educated middle class norms of discourse? Maybe. Maybe not. Status is a concern, but so is fun. And I think the language did not hurt the clarity of the message, it rather helped it. Here I think the following words of Constantine the Philosopher are appropriate: ⱈⱁⱋⱘ ⱄⰾⱁⰲⰵⱄⱏ ⱂⱔⱅⱐ ⰻⰸⰴⱃⰵⱋⰻ ⱄⱏ ⱃⰰⰸⱆⰿⱁⰿⱐ ⱄⰲⱁⰻⰿⱐ ⰳⰾ̅ⰰⱅⰻ, ⰴⰰ ⰻ ⰲⱐⱄⰵ ⰱⱃⰰⱅⱐⱑ ⱃⰰⰸⱆⰿⱑⱙⱅⱏ, ⱀⰵⰶⰵ ⱅⱐⰿⱘ ⱄⰾⱁⰲⰵⱄⱏ ⱀⰵⱃⰰⰸⱆⰿⱐⱀⱏ.
8Rafael Harth
So, I find it very stupid to downvote an expression of an aesthetic/tonal preference, which is why I strong-upvoted this comment to restore normalcy (to +2). This is what two-axis voting is for! Do people feel the comparisons are needlessly inflammatory? Because I don't. They're probably apt descriptions of what Jensen pattern-matches this post to.
Jensen40

What are you supposed to conclude with data that doesn't accurately reflect what it is supposed to measure?

Jensen10

>"the same product getting cheaper"

floss costing 5$ in year 2090 and then lowering to 3$ in year 2102.

>"the same cost buying more"

laptop in year 1980 running at piss/minute costing 600$ while laptop in year 2020 running at silver/minute costing 600$.

change 1 is a productivity increase.

change 2 isn't.

4Program Den
I'd toss software into the mix as well.  How much does it cost to reproduce a program?  How much does software increase productivity? I dunno, I don't think the way the econ numbers are portrayed here jive with reality.  For instance:  doesn't strike me as a factual statement.  In what world has streaming video not meaningfully contributed to economic growth?  At a glance it's ~$100B industry.  It's had a huge impact on society.  I can't think of many laws or regulations that had any negative impacts on its growth.  Heck, we passed some tax breaks here, to make it easier to film, since the entertainment industry was bringing so much loot into the state and we wanted more (and the breaks paid off). I saw what digital did to the printing industry.  What it's done to the drafting/architecture/modeling industry.  What it's done to the music industry.  Productivity has increased massively since the early 80s, by most metrics that matter (if the TFP doesn't reflect this, perhaps it's not a very good model?), although I guess "that matter" might be a "matter" of opinion.  Heh. Or maybe it's just messing with definitions? "Oh, we mean productivity in this other sense of the word!".  And if we are using non-standard (or maybe I should say "specialized") meanings of "productivity", how does demand factor in?  Does it even make sense to break it into quarters?  Yadda yadda Mainly it's just odd to have gotten super-productive as an individual[1], only to find out that this productivity is an illusion or something? I must be missing the point. Or maybe those gains in personal productivity have offset global productivity or something? Or like, "AI" gets a lot of hype, so Microsoft lays off 10k workers to "focus" on it— which ironically does the opposite of what you'd think a new tech would do (add 10k, vs drop), or some such? It seems like we've been progressing relatively steadily, as long as I've been around to notice, but then again, I'm not the most observant cookie
Jensen*1814

A few points:

  1. I think it's important to distinguish between economic growth and value. A laptop that costs 500$ in 1990 and a laptop that costs 500$ in 2020 are nowhere near close in value, but are in GDP. 
  2. You are correct about lots of barriers to growth being social/legal rather than technological (see Burja) - though in the long term jobs that can be replaced with AI will be replaced with AI, as the social need for bullshitjobhavers decreases significantly when they leave.
  3. I don't think it is fair to infer that computers had a small impact on GDP and
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3omegastick
I think #1 is the most important here. I'm not a professional economist, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong. My understanding is that TFP is calculated based on nominal GDP, rather than real GDP, meaning the same products and services getting cheaper doesn't affect the growth statistic. Furthermore, although the formulation in the TFP paper has a term for "labor quality", in practice that's ignored because it's very difficult to calculate, making the actual calculation roughly (GDP / hours worked). All this means that it's pretty unsuitable as a measure of how well a technology like the Internet (or AI) improves productivity. TFP (utilization adjusted even more so) is very useful for measuring impacts of policies, shifts in average working hours, etc. But the main thing it tells us about technology is "technology hasn't reduced average working hours". If you use real GDP instead, you'll see that exponential growth continues as expected.