Max H

Most of my posts and comments are about AI and alignment. Posts I'm most proud of, which also provide a good introduction to my worldview:

I also created Forum Karma, and wrote a longer self-introduction here.

PMs and private feedback are always welcome.

NOTE: I am not Max Harms, author of Crystal Society. I'd prefer for now that my LW postings not be attached to my full name when people Google me for other reasons, but you can PM me here or on Discord (m4xed) if you want to know who I am.

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Max H1818

I think it was fine for Nate to delete your comment and block you, and fine for you to repost it as a short form.

But my anecdote is a valid report of the historical consequences of talking with Nate – just as valid as the e/acc co-founder's tweet.

"just as valid" [where validity here = topical] seems like an overclaim here. And at the time of your comment, Nate had already commented in other threads, which are now linked in a footnote in the OP:

By "cowardice" here I mean the content, not the tone or demeanor. I acknowledge that perceived arrogance and overconfidence can annoy people in communication, and can cause backlash. For more on what I mean by courageous vs cowardly content, see this comment. I also spell out the argument more explicitly in this thread.

So it's a bit of a stretch to say that any AI safety-related discussion or interpersonal interaction that Nate has ever had in any context is automatically topical.

I also think your description of Nate's decision to delete your comment as "not ... allowing people to read negative truths about his own behavior" is somewhat overwrought. Both of the comment threads you linked were widely read and discussed at the time, and this shortform will probably also get lots of eyeballs and attention. 

At the very least, there is an alternate interpretation, which is that the comment really was off-topic in Nate's view, and given the history between the two of you, he chose to block + delete instead of re-litigating or engaging in a back-and-forth that both of you would probably find unpleasant and unproductive. Maybe it would have been more noble or more wise of him to simply let your comment stand without direct engagement, but that can also feel unpleasant (for Nate or others).

Max H61

I gave YIMBYism as an example of a policy agenda that would benefit from more widespread support for liberalism, not as something I personally support in all cases.

A liberal argument for NIMBYism could be: people are free to choose the level of density and development that they want within their own communities. But they should generally do so deliberately and through the rule of law, rather than through opposition to individual developments (via a heckler's veto, discretionary review processes that effectively require developers to lobby local politicians and woo random interest groups, etc.). Existing strict zoning laws are fine in places where they already exist, but new laws and restrictions should be wary of treading on the rights of existing property owners, and of creating more processes that increase discretionary power of local lawmakers and busybodies.

Max H52

Hmm, I'm not so pessimistic. I don't think the core concepts of liberalism are so complex or unintuitive that the median civically engaged citizen can't follow along given an amenable background culture.

And lots of policy, political philosophy, culture, big ideas, etc. are driven by elites of some form, not just liberalism. Ideas and culture among elites can change and spread very quickly. I don't think a liberal renaissance requires "wrestling control" of any particular institutions so much as a cultural shift that is already happening to some degree (it just needs slightly better steering IMO).

Max H20

I don't personally feel screwed over, and I suspect many of the people in the coalitions I mentioned feel similarly. I am sympathetic to people who do feel that way, but I am not really asking them to unilaterally honor anything. The only thing in my post that's a real concrete ask is for people who do already broadly support liberalism, or who have preferred policy agendas that would benefit from liberalism, be more outspoken about their support.

(To clarify, I have been using "liberalism" as a shorthand for "bedrock liberalism", referring specifically to the principles I listed in the first paragraph - I don't think everything that everyone usually calls "liberalism" is broadly popular with all the coalitions I listed, but most would at least pay lip service to the specific principles in the OP.)

Max H20

I don't really agree with the characterization of recent history as people realizing that "liberalism isn't working", and to the degree that I would advocate for any specific policy change, I support a "radical incrementalist" approach. e.g. maybe the endpoint of the ideal concept of property rights is pretty far from wherever we are right now, but to get there we should start with small, incremental changes that respect existing rights and norms as much as possible.

So for example, I think Georgism is a good idea in general, but not a panacea, and a radical and sudden implementation would be illiberal for some of the reasons articulated by @Matthew Barnett  here.

I think a more realistic way to phase in Georgism that respects liberal principles would mainly take the form of more efficient property tax regimes - instead of complex rules and constant fights over property tax assessment valuations, there would be hopefully slightly less complex fights over land valuations, with phase-ins that keep the overall tax burden roughly the same. Some property owners with relatively low-value property on higher value land (e.g. an old / low density building in Manhattan) would eventually pay more on the margin, while others with relatively high-value property on lower value land (e.g. a newer / high density building in the exurbs) would pay a bit less. Lots of people in the middle of the property-vs-land value spectrum would pay about the same. But this doesn't really get at the core philosophical objections you or others might have with current norms around the concept of property ownership in general.

Max H40

I kind of doubt that leaders at big labs would self-identify as being motivated by anything like Eliezer's notion of heroic responsibility. If any do self-identify that way though, they're either doing it wrong or misunderstanding. Eliezer has written tons of stuff about the need to respect deontology and also think about all of the actual consequences of your actions, even (especially when) the stakes are high:

The critical question here is: what happens if the plot successfully places the two of them in an epistemic Cooperation-Defection Dilemma, where rather than the two of them just having different goals, Carissa believes that he is mistaken about what happens...

In this case, Carissa could end up believing that to play 'Defect' against him would be to serve even his own goals, better than her Cooperating would serve them.  Betraying him might seem like a friendly act, an act of aid.

(https://glowfic.com/replies/1874768#reply-1874768)

If he commits to a drastic action he will estimate that actual victory lies at the end of it, and his desperation and sacrifice will not have figured into that estimation process as positive factors.  His deontology is not for sale at the price point of failure.

(https://glowfic.com/replies/1940939#reply-1940939)

Starting an AI lab in order to join a doomed race to superintelligence, and then engaging in a bunch of mundane squabbles for corporate control, seems like exactly the opposite of the sentiment here:

For Albus Dumbledore, as for her, the rule in extremis was to decide what was the right thing to do, and do it no matter the cost to yourself. Even if it meant breaking your bounds, or changing your role, or letting go of your picture of yourself. That was the last resort of Gryffindor.

(https://hpmor.com/chapter/93)


Also, re this example:

It also seemingly justifies or obligates Sam Altman to fight back when the OpenAI board tried to fire him, if he believed the board was interfering with his mission.


In general, it seems perfectly fine and normal for a founder-CEO to fight back against a board ouster - no need to bring heroic responsibility into it. Of course, all parties including the CEO and the board should stick to legal / above-board / ethical means of "fighting back", but if there's a genuine disagreement between the board and the CEO on how to best serve shareholder interests (or humanity's interests, for a non-profit), why wouldn't both sides vigorously defend their own positions and power? 

Perhaps the intended reading of your example is that heroic responsibility would obligate or justify underhanded tactics to win control, when the dispute has existential consequences. But I think that's a misunderstanding of the actual concept. Ordinary self-confidence and agency obligate you to defend your own interests / beliefs / power, and heroic responsibility says that you're obligated to win without stepping outside the bounds of deontology or slipping into invalid / motivated reasoning.

Max H12-2

Maybe the recent tariff blowup is actually just a misunderstanding due to bad terminology, and all we need to do is popularize some better terms or definitions. We're pretty good at that around here, right?

Here's my proposal: flip the definitions of "trade surplus" and "trade deficit." This might cause a bit of confusion at first, and a lot of existing textbooks will need updating, but I believe these new definitions capture economic reality more accurately, and will promote clearer thinking and maybe even better policy from certain influential decision-makers, once widely adopted.

New definitions:

  • Trade surplus: Country A has a bilateral "trade surplus" with Country B if Country A imports more tangible goods (cars, steel, electronics, etc.) from Country B than it exports back. In other words, Country A ends up with more real, physical items. Country B, meanwhile, ends up with more than it started with of something much less important: fiat currency (flimsy paper money) or 1s and 0s in a digital ledger (probably not even on a blockchain!).

    If you extrapolate this indefinitely in a vacuum, Country A eventually accumulates all of Country B's tangible goods, while Country B is left with a big pile of paper. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal for Country A if you ask me.

    It's OK if not everyone follows this explanation or believes it - they can tell it's the good one because it has "surplus" in the name. Surely everyone wants a surplus.

  • Trade deficit: Conversely, Country A has a "trade deficit" if it exports more tangible resources than it imports, and thus ends up with less goods on net. In return, it only receives worthless fiat currency from some country trying to hoard actual stuff for their own people. Terrible deal!

    Again, if you don't totally follow, that's OK, just pay attention to the word "deficit". Everyone knows that deficits are bad and should be avoided.

Under the new definitions, it becomes clear that merely returning to the previous status quo of a few days ago, where the US only "wins" the trade war by several hundred billion dollars, is insufficient for the truly ambitious statesman. Instead, the US government should aggressively mint more fiat currency in order to purchase foreign goods, magnifying our trade surplus and ensuring that in the long run the United States becomes the owner of all tangible global wealth.

Addressing second order concerns: if we're worried about a collapse in our ability to manufacture key strategic goods at home during a crisis, we can set aside part of the resulting increased surplus to subsidize domestic production in those areas. Some of the extra goods we're suddenly importing will probably be pretty useful in getting some new factories of our own off the ground. (But of course we shouldn't turn around and export any of that domestic production to other countries! That would only deplete our trade surplus.)

Max H9-3

Describing misaligned AIs as evil feels slightly off. Even "bad goals" makes me think there's a missing mood somewhere. Separately, describing other peoples' writing about misalignment this way is kind of straw.

Current AIs mostly can't take any non-fake responsibility for their actions, even if they're smart enough to understand them. An AI advising someone to e.g. hire a hitman to kill their husband is a bad outcome if there's a real depressed person and a real husband who are actually harmed. An AI system would be responsible (descriptively / causally, not normatively) for that harm to the degree that it acts spontaneously and against its human deployers' wishes, in a way that is differentially dependent on its actual circumstances (e.g. being monitored / in a lab vs. not).

Unlike current AIs, powerful, autonomous, situationally-aware AI could cause harm for strategic reasons or as a side effect of executing large-scale, transformative plans that are indifferent (rather than specifically opposed) to human flourishing. A misaligned AI that wipes out humanity in order to avoid shutdown is a tragedy, but unless the AI is specifically spiteful or punitive in how it goes about that, it seems kind of unfair to call the AI itself evil.

Max H40

The original tweets seem at least partially tongue-in-cheek? Trade has lots of benefits that don't depend on the net balance. If Country A buys $10B of goods from Country B and sells $9B of other goods to country B, that is $19B of positive-sum transactions between individual entities in each country, presumably with all sorts of positive externalities and implications about your economy.

The fact that the net flow is $1B in one direction or the other just doesn't matter too much. Having a large trade surplus (or large trade deficit) is a proxy for generally doing lots of trading and industry, which will tend to correlate with a lot of other things that made or will make you wealthy. But it would be weird if a country could get rich solely by running a trade surplus, while somehow avoiding reaping any of the other usual benefits of trading. "Paying other countries to discern your peoples' ability to produce" is plausibly a benefit that you get from a trade surplus even if you try hard to avoid all the others, though.

Max H5218

My guess is that the IT and computer security concerns are somewhat exaggerated and probably not actually that big of a deal, nor are they likely to cause any significant or lasting damage on their own. At the very least, I wouldn't put much stock in what a random anonymous IT person says, especially when those words are filtered through and cherry-picked by a journalist.

These are almost certainly sprawling legacy systems, not a modern enterprise cloud where you can simply have a duly authorized superadmin grant a time-limited ReadOnly IAM permission to * or whatever, along with centralized audit logging and sophisticated change management. There are probably more old-school / manual processes in place, which require going through layers of humans who aren't inclined to be cooperative or speedy, especially at this particular moment. I think Elon (and Trump) have some justified skepticism of those processes and the people who implemented them.

Still, there's going to be some kind of audit logging + technical change management controls, and I kind of doubt that any of Elon's people are going to deliberately sidestep or hide from those, even if they don't follow all the on-paper procedures and slash some red tape.

And ultimately, even sophisticated technical controls are not a substitute for actual legal authority, which they (apparently / perhaps questionably) have. I'll be much more concerned if they start violating court orders, even temporarily. e.g. I think it would be very bad (and more plausible than IT malfeasance or negligence) if they are ordered to stop doing whatever by a lower court, but they don't actually stop, or slow-walk on reversing everything, because they expect to win on appeal to the Supreme Court (even if they're correct about their appeal prospects). IDK about Elon's people specifically, but I think ignoring court orders (especially lower courts and temporary injunctions) is a more dangerous form of institutional decay that Trump is likely to usher in, especially since the legislature seems unlikely to offer any real push-back / rebuke.

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