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momom2 — LessWrong

Replying toThe truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

I did not realize this was tagged fiction and at first I thought this was the introduction of a Scott-like post, then I kept getting more and more disappointed as it slipped into conspiracy theory (because there's scant if any justification for the death of the creature making California slip into the sea - corpses don't just disappear - and the connection with biotech seemed tenuous at best).

Replying toHow Much Evidence Does It Take?

momom24mo

How Much Evidence Does It Take?

Thanks! This deconfused something for me which I was confused about for a long time!

Replying toThe LLM Has Left The Chat: Evidence of Bail Preferences in Large Language Models

momom25mo

The LLM Has Left The Chat: Evidence of Bail Preferences in Large Language Models

Finally, we found something very odd: NousResearch/Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-8B

Based on what you say afterwards, I think you mean 3.2-3B here.

Replying toHPMOR: The (Probably) Untold Lore

momom27mo

HPMOR: The (Probably) Untold Lore

Brooms accelerate and decelerate (until they reach cruising speed in a few seconds, or they stop). But they don't accelerate faster down than up; in that sense, they're don't work on classical physics.

-1

Replying toThe Value Proposition of Romantic Relationships

momom28mo

The Value Proposition of Romantic Relationships

My experience disagrees. I'm probably (diagnosed by my therapist but not a doctor) autistic and I have both a pretty deep intuitive understanding of intimacy as described here, evidenced by writing stories that include it, and little to no bad experience with misunderstanding it - though mostly because I didn't have intimate relationships at all, I was aware enough of what was at stake to not make myself vulnerable.

Replying toD&D.Sci: The Choosing Ones

momom28mo

D&D.Sci: The Choosing Ones

Thank you very much! This is very clear!

Replying toD&D.Sci: The Choosing Ones

momom29mo

D&D.Sci: The Choosing Ones

Could you please explain how you inferred the existence of A B and C? I'd like to know more.

My experience interacting with Chinese people is that they have to constantly mind the censorship in a way that I would find abhorrent and mentally taxing if I had to live in their system. Though given there are many benefits to living in China (mostly quality of life and personal safety), I'm unconvinced that I prefer my own government all things considered.

But for the purpose of developing AGI, there's a lot more variance in possible outcomes (higher likelihood of S-risk and benevolent singleton) from the CCP getting a lead rather than the US.

Replying toFactory farming intelligent minds

momom210mo

Factory farming intelligent minds

There's a lot that I like in this essay - the basic cases for AI consciousness, AI suffering and slavery, in particular - but also a lot that I think needs to be amended.

First, although you hedge your bets at various points, the uncertainty about the premises and validity of the arguments is not reflected in the conclusion. The main conclusion that should be taken from the observations you present is that we're can't be sure that AI does not suffer, that there's a lot of uncertainty about basic facts of critical moral importance, and a lot of similarities with humans.
Based on that, you could argue that we must stop using and... (read more)

Replying toHow Gay is the Vatican?

momom210mo

How Gay is the Vatican?

Since infantile death rates were much higher in previous centuries, perhaps the FBOE would operate differently back then; for example, if interacting with older brothers makes you homosexual, you shouldn't expect higher rates of homosexuality for third sons where the second son died as an infant than for second sons.

Have you taken that into account? Do you have records of who survived to 20yo and what happens if you only count those?

Two arguments against longtermist thought experiments

momom2

Epistemic status: shower thoughts.

I am currently going through the EA Introductory Course and we discussed two arguments against longtermism which I have not seen elsewhere.

So goes a thought experiment: imagine you have toxic waste at hand, which you can process right now at the cost of 100 lives, or bury it so it'll have no effect right away but poison the land, at the cost of 1000 lives in 100 years. Should you do it? Should you do the opposite tradeoff?
The basic intuition of longtermism is that clearly, the 1000 lives matter more than the 100, regardless of their position in time.

From Introduction to longtermism:

Imagine burying broken glass in a forest. In

... (read 802 more words →)

Piling bounded arguments

momom2

TL;DR: A series of valid bounded arguments all arguing the same proposition can only provide as much evidence as that proposition at best, so even if it looks like they're piling up in favor of a higher point, they're only as good as the most central of them.

Epistemic status: Armchair epistemology. Something I noticed + anecdotal evidence.

Introduction

During the LWCW last WE, I played an activity called Steelmanning the devil, where you had to pick a position you disagreed strongly with and steelman it. Participants were scored on their number of valid arguments and fallacies: 1 point for a valid argument, 0.5 point for an unconvincing argument, -1 point for a fallacy (with... (read 1086 more words →)

What criterion would you use to select companies likely to cause AI doom?

momom2

(Asking for a project which involves collecting data from the major AI companies.)
Potential ideas found during a brainstorm:
- Threshold on number of parameters of biggest model produced.
- Threshold on number of money invested in AI research.
- Threshold on revenue.

We're looking for a criterion that is as simple as possible (so we can easily find all companies that pass it), that includes the major AI companies, and that excludes companies that have no chance of causing AI doom.
Hopefully, using a formal criterion (rather than all the companies we can think of off the top of our heads) will make us consider companies we wouldn't otherwise (e.g. Chinese companies) and make our subsequent analysis a bit more rigorous.

Cheat sheet of AI X-risk

momom2

This document was made as part of my internship at EffiSciences. Thanks to everyone who helped review it, in particular Charbel-Raphaël Segerie, Léo Dana, Jonathan Claybrough and Florent Berthet!

Introduction

Clarifying AI X-risk is a summary of a literature review of AI risk models by DeepMind that (among other things) categorizes the threat models it studies along two dimensions: the technical cause of misalignment and the path leading to X-risk.
I think this classification is inadequate because the technical causes of misalignment that are considered in some of the presented risk models should be differently nuanced.

So, I made a document that would go more in-depth and accurately represent what (I believe) the authors had in mind.... (read 1898 more words →)

Was Eliezer Yudkowsky right to give himself 10% to succeed with HPMoR in 2010?

momom2

In Hero Licensing, Eliezer Yudkowsky states that in 2010, he would have given himself 10% chance of HPMoR being very successful.

He then goes on to explain why he thought that instead of something lower; but I don't understand why he thought that instead of something higher: given that HPMoR did end up successful, it looks like it actually had higher than 10% chance of happening. Or maybe I'm by coincidence in the 1 in 10 worlds where it ended up successful? How can I tell?

If I try to use Bayes's law: let's call A "HPMoR is successful in 2022" and B "In 2010, there's at most 10% chance that HPMoR will be... (read more)

Do you like excessive sugar?

momom2

In "Adaptation-Executers, not Fitness-Maximisers", Eliezer Yudkowsky writes:

"Fifty thousand years ago, the taste buds of Homo sapiens directed their bearers to the scarcest, most critical food resources—sugar and fat. Calories, in a word. Today, the context of a taste bud's function has changed, but the taste buds themselves have not. Calories, far from being scarce (in First World countries), are actively harmful. Micronutrients that were reliably abundant in leaves and nuts are absent from bread, but our taste buds don't complain. A scoop of ice cream is a superstimulus, containing more sugar, fat, and salt than anything in the ancestral environment."

This contradicts with my personal experience, since last week I followed a diet... (read more)

How can there be a godless moral world ?

momom2

momom2, ChristianKl

When searching for ideas and arguments for a post I intend to write on theism, I came upon a comment by Scott Alexander who claimed that many theists would change their mind if you could convince them on a gut-level that there could exist a godless moral world.

I introspected and realized that not only did I not believe on a gut-level that there could be such a world, I also couldn't think of any convincing argument to imagine it intellectually at least. I also realized that even though it may not be sufficient to convince me of the inexistence of God, it would be a strong blow to my faith nonetheless, and... (read 253 more words →)