I have something very similar to the second felt sense given when I've spent too much time on my computer and get kind of vaguely sleepy and disoriented when I try to stop even for a moment. The term I use is similar to the one my parents used to describe the tangible expression of this feeling, and it's "video game poisoning."
One rationality technique that I can infer from my past experiences is one I'm not really sure how to name; possibilities include "path divergence analysis," "counterfactual defaults," "adjacent life heuristic," "near-miss solutions," and "reality branch mining." The idea is to look at what common actions for you would be if your life had gone slightly differently (e.g. you went to a different school, were born in a different country, etc.), see what sort of actions you would commonly take under these conditions, and see if these actions have value in your...
The closest I've come to a true "factory reset" was when I realized, a few times, that school clubs I was a part of were becoming toxic and unproductive. However, I can't really point to a single button; more just a gradual stream of one bad impression after another, at which point I started to slowly disengage.
Set a Yoda Timer and share the most important idea you haven’t had time to express. Five minutes is all you get.
I really think that a lot of modern AI alignment research is being done within the academic system, but because it's done within the academic system it's fairly ignored by the independent/dedicated nonprofit research community when compared to independent/dedicated nonprofit research. On the contrary, it likely gets much more attention within academia.
I don't think the dynamic here is "each team likes their own people best." I think it's due to a...
My greatest ambition is to create a fully trainable art of rationality that’s so good it gets taught to every high schooler in the country and bankrupts multiple industries that prey on irrational behavior in the process. Although it may seem impossible, the success of anti-smoking efforts against an extremely addictive product with a massive advertising industry suggests that it's achievable, and the fact that the Internet exists now and didn't exist then suggests it's even easier than that was.
I agree with you on this, but I also don't think "sunk cost fallacy" isn't the right word to describe what you're saying. The rational behavior here is to factor in the existence of a random error term resulting from mood swings into these calculations, and if you can't fully factor it in, then generally err on the side of keeping projects going. I understand "sunk cost fallacy" to mean "factoring in the amount of effort already spent into these decisions," which does seem like a pure fallacy to me.
It's reasonable e.g. when about to watch a movie to say "I...
At any given point, you have some probability distribution over how worthwhile the project will be. The distribution can change over time, but it can change either for better or for worse. Therefore, at any point, if a rational agent expects it not to be worthwhile to expend the remaining effort to get the result, they should stop.
Of course, if you are irrational and intentionally fail to account for evidence as a way of getting out of work, this does not apply, but that's the problem then, not your lack of sunk costs.
Sorry if this is confusing. What I'm saying is, you have some estimate of the project's valuation, and this factors in the information that you expect to get in the future about the project's valuation (cf. Conservation of Expected Evidence). If there's some chance the project will turn out worthwhile, you know that chance already. But there must also be some counterbalancing chance that the project will turn out even less worthwhile than you think.
It seems to me like the "random walk" case you described is poorly formed; the possibility of a project turning out to be worth it after all should be factored into one's estimate of how "worth it" it is. If it doesn't, then that's a problem of motivated reasoning, not a reason to have a sunk cost fallacy.
Intentionally inducing fallacious reasoning in oneself is classified as "Dark Arts" for a reason, especially since it can bias one's own assessment of how well it turns out and whether to continue doing it.
Probably the most consequential trivial inconvenience for me (recently) was that I stayed up very late (hours past when I planned to go to sleep) because my phone was right next to my bed. This was because the alternate charging spot I had set up to prevent this from happening was mildly cluttered.
One of my favorite mantras is "A citizen has the courage to make the safety of the human race their personal responsibility" from the movie Starship Troopers. While a lot of the meaning is caught up in the movie's setting, the meaning that I personally draw from it is that an important part of living in the world is working hard to make the world a better place, and not assuming someone else will do it for you.
Very much agree on this one, as do many other people that I know of. However, the key counterargument as to why this may be better as an EA project than a rationality one is that "rationality" is vague on what you're applying it to, while "EA" is at least slightly more clear, and a community like this benefits from having clear goals. Nevertheless, it may make sense to market it as a "rationality" project and just have EA be part of the work it does.
So the question now turns to, how would one go about building it?
Thanks for giving some answers here to these questions; it was really helpful to have them laid out like this.
1. In hindsight, I was probably talking more about moves towards decentralization of leadership, rather than decentralization of funding. I agree that greater decentralization of funding is a good thing, but it seems to me like, within the organizations funded by a given funder, decentralization of leadership is likely useless (if leadership decisions are still being made by informal networks between orgs rather than formal ones), or it may lead to...
What's preventing MIRI from making massive investments into human intelligence augmentation? If I recall correctly, MIRI is most constrained on research ideas, but human intelligence augmentation is a huge research idea that other grantmakers, for whatever reason, aren't funding. There are plenty of shovel-ready proposals already, e.g. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JEhW3HDMKzekDShva/significantly-enhancing-adult-intelligence-with-gene-editing; why doesn't MIRI fund them?
Human intelligence augmentation is feasible over a scale of decades to generations, given iterated polygenic embryo selection.
I don't see any feasible way that gene editing or 'mind uploading' could work within the next few decades. Gene editing for intelligence seems unfeasible because human intelligence is a massively polygenic trait, influenced by thousands to tens of thousands of quantitative trait loci. Gene editing can fix major mutations, to nudge IQ back up to normal levels, but we don't know of any single genes that can boost IQ above the no...
I'm still not sure why exactly people (I'm thinking of a few in particular, but this applies to many in the field) tell very detailed stories of AI domination like "AI will use protein nanofactories to embed tiny robots in our bodies to destroy all of humanity at the press of a button." This seems like a classic use of the conjunction fallacy, and it doesn't seem like those people really flinch from the word "and" like the Sequences tell them they should.
Furthermore, it seems like people within AI alignment aren't taking the "sci-fi" criticism as seriously...
Some figures within machine learning have argued that the safety of broad-domain future AI is not a major concern. They argue that since narrow-domain present-day AI is already dangerous, this should be our primary concern, rather than that of future AI. But it doesn't have to be either/or.
Take climate change. Some climate scientists study the future possibilities of ice shelf collapses and disruptions of global weather cycles. Other climate scientists study the existing problems of more intense natural disasters and creeping desertification. But these two...
In the Soviet Union, there was a company that made machinery for vulcanizing rubber. They had the option to make more efficient machines, instead of their older models. However, they didn't do it, because they wouldn't get paid as much for making the new machines. Why would that be? Wouldn't more efficient machines be more desirable?
Well, yes, but the company got paid per pound of machine, and the new machines were lighter.
Now, you may say that this is just a problem with communist economies. Well, capitalist economies fall into very similar traps. If a co...
There is an enormous amount of joy, fulfillment, exploration, discovery, and prosperity in humanity's future... but only if advanced AI values those things.
(Policymakers, tech executives)
Even if you don't assume that the long-term future matters much, preventing AI risk is still a valuable policy objective. Here's why.
In regulatory cost-benefit analysis, a tool called the "value of a statistical life" is used to measure how much value people place on avoiding risks to their own life (source). Most government agencies, by asking about topics like how much people will pay for safety features in their car or how much people are paid for working in riskier jobs, assign a value of about ten million dollars to one statistical life. That is, redu...
Clarke’s First Law goes: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Stuart Russell is only 60. But what he lacks in age, he makes up in distinction: he’s a computer science professor at Berkeley, neurosurgery professor at UCSF, DARPA advisor, and author of the leading textbook on AI. His book Human Compatible states that superintelligent AI is possible; Clarke would recommend we listen.
(tech executives, ML researchers)
(ada...
There is a certain strain of thinker who insists on being more naturalist than Nature. They will say with great certainty that since Thor does not exist, Mr. Tesla must not exist either, and that the stories of Asclepius disprove Pasteur. This is quite backwards: it is reasonable to argue that a machine will never think because the Mechanical Turk couldn't; it is madness to say it will never think because Frankenstein's monster could. As well demand that we must deny Queen Victoria lest we accept Queen Mab, or doubt Jack London lest we admit Jack Frost. Na...
Betting against the people who said pandemics were a big deal, six years ago, is a losing proposition.
(policymakers, tech executives)
(source)
If the media reported on other dangers like it reported on AI risk, it would talk about issues very differently. It would compare events in the Middle East to Tom Clancy novels. It would dismiss runaway climate change by saying it hasn't happened yet. It would think of the risk of nuclear war in terms of putting people out of work. It would compare asteroid impacts to mudslides. It would call meteorologists "nerds" for talking about hurricanes.
AI risk is serious, and it isn't taken seriously. It's time to look past the sound bites and focus on what e...
People said man wouldn't fly for a million years. Airplanes were fighting each other eleven years later. Superintelligent AI might happen faster than you think. (policymakers, tech executives) (source) (other source)
That's sort of it, but it was specifically talking about certain types of self-deceptive behavior that appears to be instrumentally rational. The problem being is that once you've deceived yourself, you can't tell if it's a good idea or not.