All of KvmanThinking's Comments + Replies
Great response, first of all. Strong upvoted.
My subconscious gave me the following answer, after lots of trying-to-get-it-to-give-me-a-satisfactory-answer:
"Everyone tells you that you're super smart, not because you actually are (in reality, you are probably only slightly smarter than average) but because you have a variety of other traits which are correlated with smartness (i.e: having weird hobbies/interests, getting generally good grades, knowing a lot of very big and complicated-sounding words, talking as if my speech is being translated literal...
I am aware of all of these things. Although, I don't believe that I am smarter than others. (I alieve it though, I just don't want to.) After all, if I was significantly smarter, then I would probably have successfully done an intelligence-requiring major thing by now. Also, if I was significantly smarter, I would be able to understand intelligence-requiring books. I fully believe, in my deliberate, conscious mind, that I am not significantly smarter than others in my environment, I just have lots of weird interests and stuff.
The difference is that if the Exxon Mobil CEO internalizes that (s)he is harming the environment, (s)he has to go and get a completely new job, probably building dams or something. But if Sam Altman internalizes that he is increasing our chance of extinction, all he has to do is tell all his capability researchers to work on alignment, and money is still coming in; only now, less of it comes from ChatGPT subscriptions and more of it comes from grants from the Long-Term Future Fund. It's a much easier and lighter shift. Additionally, he knows that he can go...
Could someone add "7. Why do very smart people in high places say this is not a problem?" (Or you could just reply to this comment.)
I don't think such considerations apply to upvotes nearly as much if at all. Upvotes indicate agreement or approval, which doesn't need to be explained as thoroughly as disagreement (which usually involves having separate, alternative ideas in your head different from the ideas of the one you are disagreeing with)
I believe that the reason your comment was strong downvoted was because you implied that "everyone repeating things already said" is an inevitable consequence of asking people why they disagree with you. This might be true on other websites (where people are hesitant to relinquish beliefs and opinions), but not on LessWrong.
I had upvoted the ones I agreed with and thought were helpful. If I agree with something, I will upvote, because simply saying "I agree" is unnecessary when I can just click on a check mark. I appreciate and recognize the effort of those 5 other people who commented, but that is well enough communicated through agreement karma. Just because I have nothing to say about a response someone provided doesn't mean I don't value it.
Your answer wasn't cryptic at all. Don't worry. This is a great answer. Let me know when you're done with that sequence. I'll have to read it.
(Also, it's horrifying that people can be hypnotized against their will. That makes me simultaneously thankful-that and curious-why it isn't more widely practiced...)
Something like TNIL or Real Character might be used for maximum intellectual utility. But I cannot see how simply minimizing the amount of words that need to exist for compact yet precise communication would help correct the corrupted machinery our minds run on.
By "make its users more aware of their biases" I mean, for example, a language where it's really obvious when you say something illogical, or have a flaw in your reasoning.
Some ideas I had for this:
- Explicitly defined sematic spaces for every word, to dissolve questions and help people agree on the locations of phenomena in thingspace. Mechanisms for searching thingspace (while, for example, you can say "red chair" to narrow the space of all chairs down to the space of all chairs which reflect red light, it would be nice to be able to express things like "t
Also, it helps taboo your words. For example, "Toki Pona helps taboo your words" would be rendered as
tenpo toki pi toki pona li sama e tenpo toki pi ni: jan li ken kepeken ala e nimi pi ken ala sona pi pali lili.
"(the) speech-time related to Toki Pona is similar or the same as (the) speech-time with this quality: (the) person cannot use word(s) which cannot be known via small effort."
Before you complain that this is too long a phrase to be used practically, try to explain the concept of rationalist taboo in less syllables than I did in Toki Pona, whilst not relying on other rationalist jargon.
by "making an AI that builds utopia and stuff" I mean an AI that would act in such a way that rather than simply obeying the intent of its promptors, it goes and actively improves the world in the optimal way. An AI which has fully worked out Fun Theory and simply goes around filling the universe with pleasure and beauty and freedom and love and complexity in such a way that no other way would be more Fun.
it will not consider it acceptable to kill me and instantly replace me with a perfect copy
Why not? I would find this acceptable, considering you are your information system.
1I disagree with your disagreement of Eliezer and Connor's conclusions, but I still upvoted because you worded your argument and response quite well. Judging from your comments, you seem not to have a very high opinion of LessWrong, and yet you choose to interact anyways, because you would like to counterargue. You think we are just a big echo chamber of doom, and yet you learn our jargon. Good job. I disagree with what you say, but thank you for being the dissent we encourage. If you would like to know why we believe what we do, you would do well to read t...
It's "101"? I searched the regular internet to find out, but I got some yes's and some no's, which I suspect were just due to different definitions of intelligence.
It's controversial?? Has that stopped us before? When was it done to death?
I'm just confused, because if people downvote my stuff, they're probably trying to tell me something, and I don't know what it is. So I'm just curious.
I already figured that. The point of this question was to ask if there could possibly exist things that look indistinguishable from true alignment solutions (even to smart people), but that aren't actually alignment solutions. Do you think things like this could exist?
By the way, good luck with your plan. Seeing people actively go out and do actually meaningful work to save the world gives me hope for the future. Just try not to burn out. Smart people are more useful to humanity when their mental health is in good shape.
- Yes, human intelligence augmentation sounds like a good idea.
- There are all sorts of "strategies" (turn it off, raise it like a kid, disincentivize changing the environment, use a weaker AI to align it) that people come up with when they're new to the field of AI safety, but that are ineffective. And their ineffectiveness is only obvious and explainable by people who specifically know how AI behaves. Supposes there are strategies which ineffectiveness is only obvious and explainable by people who know way more about decisions and agents and optimal strategi
I certainly believe he could. After reading Tamsin Leake's "everything is okay" (click the link if you dare), I felt a little unstable, and felt like I had to expend deliberate effort to not think about the described world in sufficient detail in order to protect my sanity. I felt like I was reading something that had been maximized by a semi-powerful AI to be moving, almost infohazardously moving, but not quite; that this approached the upper bound of what humans could read while still accepting the imperfection of their current conditions.
utopia
It's a protopia. It is a word better than ours. It is not perfect. It would be advisable to keep this in mind. dath ilan likely has its own, separate problems.
I think the flaw is how he claims this:
No one begins to truly search for the Way until their parents have failed them, their gods are dead, and their tools have shattered in their hand.
I think that these three things are not things that cause a desire for rationality, but things that rationality makes you notice.
If I am not sufficiently terrified by the prospect of our extinction, I will not take as much steps to try and reduce its likelihood. If my subconscious does not internalize this sufficiently, I will not be as motivated. Said subconscious happiness affects my conscious reasoning without me consciously noticing.
this is beautiful, but I can't think of anything specific to say, so I'll just give some generic praise. I like how he only used big words when necessary.