All of mbrooks's Comments + Replies

mbrooks83

hmm...

"It is not prosocial to maximize personal flourishing under these circumstances."

I don't think this guide is at all trying to maximize personal flourishing at the cost of the communal.

It's actually very easy, quick, and cheap to follow the suggestions to up your personal welfare. If society was going to go through a bumpy patch I would want more reasonable, prepared, and thoughtful people to help steer humanity through and make it to the other side

None of the ideas I suggested would hurt communal well being, either.

I feel like it's a bit harsh to say... (read more)

2Søren Elverlin
Then I misinterpreted it. One quote from the original post that contributed was "ensuring personal survival until the singularity should be a top priority for yourself". I agree that taking the steps you outlined above is wise, and should be encouraged. If the original post had been framed like your comment, I would have upvoted.
mbrooks50

If there other resources that are doing something similar, please link them in the comments so I can use the information to improve the guide (with a reference). Thanks!

mbrooks10

TIME MOVED TO 12 PM

Sorry to change it last minute but I now have plans later on Saturday I can't move so I'm shifting the meetup to an earlier time.

What are the transaction costs if you need to do 3 transactions?
1. Get the refund bonuses from the producer
2. Get the pledges from funders
3. Return the pledges + bonus if it doesn't work out

Also, will PayPal allow this type of money sending?

Congrats on getting funded way above your threshold!

1moyamo
I think it's about 10%, but I'll need more experience to see how much it actually works out on average. For comparison, I think normal crowdfunding has about 5-8% fees, but only if you succeed.

@habryka curious what you think of this comment

Fair enough regarding Twitter

Curious what your thoughts are on my comment below

I'm talking about doing a good enough job to avoid takes like these: https://twitter.com/AI_effect_/status/1641982295841046528

50k views on the Tweet. This one tweet probably matters more than all of the Reddit comments put together

 

4habryka
50k views is actually relatively little for a tweet. The view numbers seem super inflated. I feel like I've seen tweets with 1000+ likes and 100k+ "views" on the topic of the Lex Friedman podcast (I think positive, but I really don't remember).  I didn't mean to bring up the Reddit comments as consensus, I meant them as a relatively random sample of internet responses.

I don't find this argument convincing. I don't think Sam did a great job either but that's also because he has to be super coy about his company/plans/progress/techniques etc.

The Jordan Peterson comment was making fun of Lex and a positive comment for Sam.

Besides, I can think Sam did kinda bad and Elizier did kind of bad but expect Elizier to do much better!


.
 

I'm curious to know your rating on how you think Eliezer did compare to what you'd expect is possible with 80 hours of prep time including the help of close friends/co-workers.

I would rate his ep... (read more)

1mbrooks
@habryka curious what you think of this comment
mbrooks1-1

The easiest point to make here is Yud's horrible performance on Lex's pod. It felt like no prep and brought no notes/outlines/quotes??? Literally why?

Millions of educated viewers and he doesn't prepare..... doesn't seem very rational to me. Doesn't seem like systematically winning to me.

Yud saw the risk of AGI way earlier than almost everyone and has thought a lot about it since then. He has some great takes and some mediocre takes, but all of that doesn't automatically make him a great public spokesperson!!!

He did not come off as convincing, helpful, kind... (read more)

-17Sen
habryka172

The top reactions on Reddit all seem pretty positive to me (Reddit being less filtered for positive comments than Youtube): https://www.reddit.com/r/lexfridman/comments/126q8jj/eliezer_yudkowsky_dangers_of_ai_and_the_end_of/?sort=top 

Indeed, the reaction seems better than the interview with Sam Altman: https://www.reddit.com/r/lexfridman/comments/121u6ml/sam_altman_openai_ceo_on_gpt4_chatgpt_and_the/?sort=top 

Here are the top quotes I can find about the content from the Eliezer Reddit thread: 

This was dark. The part that really got me was th

... (read more)
mbrooks-1-2

Toby and Elon did today what I was literally suggesting: https://twitter.com/tobyordoxford/status/1627414519784910849

@starship006, @Zack_M_Davis, @lc, @Nate Showell do you all disagree with Toby's tweet?

Should the EA and Rationality movement not signal-boost Toby's tweet?
 

Elon further signal boosts Toby's post

3Zack_M_Davis
Ord's Tweet seems good. Individual Twitter users re-Tweeting it because they, personally, want to share the information also seems good; I don't see why it matters whether they're part of "the EA and Rationality movement", whatever that is. (Personally, I'm avoiding Twitter this month.)

I see your point, and I agree. But I'm not advocating for sabotaging research.

I'm talking about admonishing a corporation for cutting corners and rushing a launch that turned out to be net negative.

Did you retweet this tweet like Eliezer did?https://twitter.com/thegautamkamath/status/1626290010113679360

If not, is it because you didn't want to publicly sabotage research?

Do you agree or disagree with this twitter thread? https://twitter.com/nearcyan/status/1627175580088119296?t=s4eBML752QGbJpiKySlzAQ&s=19

Are you saying that you're unsure if the launch of the chatbot was net positive?

I'm not talking about propaganda. I'm literally saying "signal boost the accurate content that's already out there showing that Microsoft rushed the launch of their AI chatbot making it creepy, aggressive, and misaligned. Showing that it's harder to do right than they thought"

Eleizer (and others) retweeted content admonishing Microsoft, I'm just saying we should be doing more of that.

6Zack_M_Davis
Maybe this is a better way of putting it: I agree that the Bing launch is very bad precedent and it's important to warn people about the problems with that, but the whole way you're talking about this seems really spammy and low-integrity, which would be fine and great if being spammy would save the world, but there are generalizable reasons why that doesn't work. People can tell when the comments section is being flooded by an organized interest group, and that correctly makes them trust the comments less. Here's an idea (but maybe you can think of something better): if you want to help spread messages about this, maybe instead of telling "us" (the EAs, the rats) to become a signal-boosting PR war army (which is not what we're built for), write up your own explanation of why the Bing launch was bad, in your own voice, that covers an angle of the situation that hasn't already been covered by someone else. Sincerity is more credible than just turning up the volume. I will eagerly retweet it (when I get back from my February Twitter hiatus).
6Zack_M_Davis
No. (I agree that it was bad, and that pointing out that it was bad is good.) The intent of "I'm not going to take a position on that" was to keep the grandparent narrowly-scoped; you asked, "Why aren't we?" and I explained a reason why Less Wrong readers are disinclined in general to strategically take action to "shape the public's perception", as contrasted to laying out our actual reasoning without trying to control other people's decisions. In the sense of "A concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people".

I felt I was saying "Simulacrum Level 1: Attempt to describe the world accurately."

The AI was rushed, misaligned, and not a good launch for its users. More people need to know that. It's literally already how NYT and others are describing it (accurately) I'm just suggesting signal boosting that content.

We're at the pizza place off the green "A Legna"

Looks like the rain will stop before 2 pm. So we can meet up at the green and then decide if we want to head somewhere else.

mbrooks4813

I'm also on a team trying to build impact certificates/retroactive public goods funding and we are receiving a grant from an FTX Future Fund regrantor to make it happen!

If you're interested in learning more or contributing you can:

  • Read about our ongoing $10,000 retro-funding contest (Austin is graciously contributing to the prize pool)
  • Submit an EA Forum Post to this retro-funding contest (before July 1st)
  • Join our Discord to chat/ask questions
  • Read/Comment on our lengthy informational EA forum post "Towards Impact Markets"

It's weird that I have my own startup, completely understand using real users for user testing, and also barely ever "user-test" any of my writing with actual audience members.

Once you shared with me your document it became super clear I should, so thank you!

mbrooks190

This is really really bad design. It 100% looks like dxu is a new comment thread that is referring to the original poster, not a hidden deleted comment that could be saying the complete opposite of the original poster...

1Yitz
Could someone on the LessWrong team get on fixing this semi-urgently? This could (and in this case almost did) lead to extreme misunderstandings