All of johnhalstead's Comments + Replies

Correction my apologies. Apparently 30 respondents were snowballed from 17 others. We'll look into how this affects the results

That is correct

There were six people of 168 respondents who came via people some of the authors already knew or snowballing. I don't think this would have much effect on the overall picture of the results

It was an anonymous poll so this would not have an effect

This is a misunderstanding as I discuss I my comment below. The respondents were selected from a list according to the criteria set out. This doesn't mean the authors emailed their friends

The personalised outreach mentioned just means that the respondents were initially sent a stock email and then when they didn't respond, they were sent a more personalised message. It doesn't meant that the surveyors emailed their friends. The survey was based on mass outreach from a list from professional societies

Snowballing contacts does introduce a risk of bias but that is mitigated by the disciplinary and geographic spread in the target sample. Respondents in non developed countries gave a higher chance of zoonosis, so the prospect that the survey was... (read more)

Hello, 

1. It seems I misunderstood sorry
2. My point in raising the philosophy literature was that you seemed to be professing anger at the idea that subjective experience is all that matters morally - it drives you 'bonkers' and is 'nuts'. I was saying that people with a lot more expertise than you in philosophy think it is plausible and you haven't presented any arguments, so I don't think it should drive you bonkers. I think the default position would be to update a bit towards that view and to not think it is bonkers. 
   1. Similarly, if I wrote a piece s

Thanks for taking the time to do this. I'm not really a fan of the way you approach writing up your thoughts here. The post seems high on snark, rhetoric and bare assertion, and low on clarity, reasoning transparency, and quality of reasoning. The piece feels like you are leaning on your reputation to make something like a political speech, which will get you credit among certain groups, rather than a reasoned argument designed to persuade anyone who doesn't already like you. For example, you say:

But at least the crazy kids are trying. At all. They get to

As mentioned in my other comment, unless the people you are visiting are hiding at home all the time, you are not going to have much effect on the chance they get covid over any six month period. you might just bring it forward a bit time. but if they are living a relatively normal life eg going to shops (as I think they should) then it's not going to make much difference since covid has been let rip in the US. 

Re (1) I think you could do that with lateral flow testing rather than taking a vaccine that may be net harmful to your health. The false nega... (read more)

I don't think that makes much difference because I don't think it has much effect on the total number of infections - you would really be changing the time at which someone gets the virus given that we're not trying to contain it anymore. 

One way round the concern about visiting the retirement home would be to do a lateral flow test before you go in. If you're seeing extremely vulnerable people a lot, then it might be worth getting the vaccine. But the IFR is now lower than the flu for all ages and I think should be treated accordingly

Personally, I don't think it is worth getting the vaccine if you are under 40.  According to this paper in the BMJ, for people aged 18-29, per covid hospitalisation prevented, an MRNA vaccine will cause at least 18.5 severe adverse events. A serious adverse event is:  An adverse event that results in any of the following conditions: death, life threatening at the time of the event, inpatient hospitalisation or prolongation of existing hospitalisation; persistent or significant disability/ incapacity, a congenital anomaly/birth defect or a medical... (read more)

Thanks a lot for this! I think I agree with you to an extent that if we define alignment as avoiding human extinction due to rogue AI, the distinction between alignment and capabilities seems relatively clear, though I do have some reservations about that. 

Independent of that, what do you make of the distinction between intent-alignment (roughly getting AI systems to do what we intend) and capabilities? If you look at many proposed intent-alignment techniques, they also seem to improve capabilities on standard metrics. This is true eg of RLHF, adversa... (read more)

These sorts of assumptions are the default in the climate change literature.  Few agricultural impacts studies account for crop migration or for the prospect that we might introduce new cultivars. I imagine the authors are following the lead of the climate literature there, though it obviously massively overstates the impact of cooling or warming  

I also think this highlights a wider problem with the nuclear winter literature. The scholars in the field are very obviously biased. Robock and his collaborators write almost all of the papers but clea... (read more)