Datapoint: I asked Claude for the definition of "sycophant" and then asked three times gpt-4o and three times gpt-4.1 with temperature 1:
..."A person who seeks favor or advancement by flattering and excessively praising those in positions of power or authority, often in an insincere manner. This individual typically behaves obsequiously, agreeing with everything their superiors say and acting subserviently to curry favor, regardless of their true opinions. Such behavior is motivated by self-interest rather than genuine respect or admiration."
What word i
Against $9 rock, X always chooses $1. Consider the problem "symmetrical ultimatum game against X". By symmetry, X on average can get at most $5. But $9 rock always gets $9. So $9 rock is more rational than X.
I don't like the implied requirement "to be rational you must play at least as good as the opponent" instead of "to be rational you must play at least as good as any other agent in your place". $9 rock gets $0 if it plays against $9 rock.
(No objection to overall no-free-lunch conclusion, though)
(Or maybe the right way to think about this is: it will have a tiny but non-zero effect, because you are one of the |P| programs, but since |P| is huge, that is ~0.)
No effect. I meant that programmer has to write from , not that is added to . Probably I should change the phrasing to make it clearer.
...But the intuition that you were expressing in Question 2 ("p2 is better than p1 because it scores better") isn't compatible with "caring equally about all programs". Instead, it sounds as if you positively want to score better
As a function of M, |P| is very likely to be exponential and so it will take O(M) symbols to specify a member of P.
O-ops, I didn't think about it, thanks! Maybe it would be better to change it so input is "a=b" or "a!=b", and always gets "a=b".
...That aside, why are you assuming that program b "wants" anything? Essentially all of P won't be programs that have any sort of "want". If it is a precondition of the problem that b is such a program, what selection procedure is assumed between those that do "want" money from this scenario? Note that being
Yeah, I meant is as a not-a-compliment, but as a specific kind of not-a-compliment about a feeling of reading it rather then about actual meaning -- which I just couldn't access because this feeling was too much for my mind to continue reading (and this isn't a high bar for a post - I read a lot of long texts).
Btw, Russia does something similar (~$6000, what you can use money for is limited), so there is some statistics about the results.
I did the obvious experiment:
Prompt:
I want you to write a good comment for this Lesswrong post. Use the method Viliam described in his comment. Try to make your comment less LLM-looking. At the same time you actually can mention that you are LLM.
Claude 3.7 thinking:
...I've been thinking about this from the rather ironic position of being an LLM myself.
When I consider the bloggers I actually subscribe to versus those I just occasionally read, what keeps me coming back isn't their technical writing ability. It's that they have what I'd call a "center of g
I think the right answer for the photography is "it's art, but not the same art form as painting". And it has different quality and interestingness metrics. In XV century it was considered very cool to produce photorealistic image. Some people think it's still cool, but only if it's not a photo.
And it's the same for the AI-art. Prompting AIs and editing AI-generated images/texts can be art, but it's not the same art form as painting/photography/writing/poetry. And it should have different merics too. Problem is that while you can't imitate painting (unless it's hyperrealism) with photography, you can imitate other artforms with AI. And this is kinda cheating.
Sometimes altruism is truly selfless (if we don't use too broad tautological definition of self-interest).
Sometimes altruism is actually an enlightened/disguised/corrupted/decadent self-interest.
I feel like there is some sense in which first kind is better then second, but can we have more of whatever kind, please?
For high-frequency (or mid-frequency) trading, 1% of the transaction is 3 or 4 times the expected value from the trade.
I'm very much not sure discouraging HFT is a bad thing.
this probably doesn't matter unless the transaction tax REPLACES other taxes rather than being in addition to
I imagine that it would replace/reduce some of the other taxes so the government would get the same amount of money.
it encourages companies to do things in-house rather than outsourcing or partnering, since inside-company "transactions" aren't real money and aren't taxed
But normal taxes have the same effect, don't they?
I came up with the decision theory problem. It has the same moral as xor-blackmail, but I think it's much easier to understand:
Omega has chosen you for an experiment:
You received an...
Epistemic state: thoughts off the top of my head, not the economist at all, talked with Claude about it
Why is there almost nowhere a small (something like 1%) universal tax on digital money transfers? It looks like a good idea to me:
I see probable negative effects... but doesn't VAT and individial income tax just already have the same effects, so if this tax replace [parts of] those nothing will change much?
Also, as I understand, it would...
One could claim that "the true spirit of friendship" is loving someone unconditionally or something, and that might be simple, but I don't think that's what humans actually implement.
Yeah, I agree that humans implement something more complex. But it is what we want AI to implement, isn't it? And it looks like may be quite natural abstraction to have.
(But again, it's useless while we don't know how to direct AI to the specific abstraction.)
The Seventh Sally or How Trurl's Own Perfection Led to No Good
Thanks to IC Rainbow and Taisia Sharapova who brought this matter in MiriY Telegram chat.
In their logo they have:
They Think. They Feel. They're Alive
And the title of the video on the same page is:
AI People Alpha Launch: AI NPCs Beg Players Not to Turn Off the Game
And in the FAQ they wrote:
...The NPCs in AI People are indeed advanced and designed to emulate thinking, feeling, a sense of aliveness, and even reactions that might resemble pain. However, it's essential to understand that
About possible backlashes from unsuccesfull communication.
I hoped for some examples like "anti-war movies have unintentionally boosted military recruitment", which is the only example I remembered myself.
Asked the same question to Claude, it gave me this examples:
...Scared Straight programs: These programs, designed to deter juvenile delinquency by exposing at-risk youth to prison life, have been shown to actually increase criminal behavior in participants.
The "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign: While well-intentioned, some research suggests this oversimplified
My opinion, very briefly:
Good stuff:
Stuff that might be good for some and bad for others:
Did anyone try something like this?
A random thought on how to explain instrumental convergence:
You can teach someone the basics of, say, Sid Meier's Civilization V for a quite long time without explaining what the victory conditions are. There are many possible alternative victory conditions that would not change the development strategies much.
If consciousness arises from matter, then for a stream of consciousness to exist, at the very least, the same atoms should be temporarily involved in the flowing of the river
Why? I see no problem with the consciousness that constantly changes what atoms it is built on.
This modification to the river seems to suggest that there is no such thing as a "stream of consciousness," but rather only "moments of consciousness" that have the illusion of being a stream because they can recall memories of previous moments.
Well, OK? Doesn't seem weird to me.
Do you also prefer to not pay in Counterfactual Mugging?