(Meta/site question.) I have all settings related to comment hiding disabled[1] (do not collapse comments / do not truncate comments in large threads / do not truncate comments on home page)[2]. However, today I noted that comments appear to be hidden some of the time regardless[3]. This appears to be...
Bug report[1]: in the default editor typing a space[2] after an inline LaTeX equation at the end of the line deletes all text on the line from the first inline LaTeX equation on the line onwards[3]. For Atest instance: Btest If I hit space after the end of the above...
I should probably reread the paper.
That being said:
No, it doesn't, any more than "Godel's theorem" or "Turing's proof" proves simulations are impossible or "problems are NP-hard and so AGI is impossible".
I don't follow your logic here, which probably means I'm missing something. I agree that your latter cases are invalid logic. I don't see why that's relevant.
simulators can simply approximate
This does not evade this argument. If nested simulations successively approximate, total computation decreases exponentially (or the Margolus–Levitin theorem doesn't apply everywhere).
simulate smaller sections
This does not evade this argument. If nested simulations successively simulate smaller sections, total computation decreases exponentially (or the Margolus–Levitin theorem doesn't apply everywhere).
tamper with observers inside the simulation
This does... (read more)
Said argument applies if we cannot recursively self-simulate, regardless of reason (Margolus–Levitin theorem, parent turning the simulation off or resetting it before we could, etc).
In order for 'almost all' computation to be simulated, most simulations have to be recursively self-simulating. So either we can recursively self-simulate (which would be interesting), we're rare (which would also be interesting), or we have a non-zero chance we're in the 'real' universe.
Interesting.
I am also skeptical of the simulation argument, but for different reasons.
My main issue is: the normal simulation argument requires violating the Margolus–Levitin theorem[1], as it requires that you can do an arbitrary amount of computation[2] via recursively simulating[3].
This either means that the Margolus–Levitin theorem is false in our universe (which would be interesting), we're a 'leaf' simulation where the Margolus–Levitin theorem holds, but there's many universes where it does not (which would also be interesting), or we have a non-zero chance of not being in a simulation.
This is essentially a justification for 'almost exactly all such civilizations don't go on to build many simulations'.
... (read more)Playing less wouldn’t decrease my score
Interesting. Is this typically the case with chess? Humans tend to do better with tasks when they are repeated more frequently, albeit with strongly diminishing returns.
being distracted is one of the effects of stress.
Absolutely, which makes it very difficult to tease apart 'being distracted as a result of stress caused by X causing a drop' and 'being distracted due to X causing a drop'.
solar+batteries are dropping exponentially in price
Pulling the data from this chart from your source:
...and fitting[1] an exponential trend with offset[2], I get:
(Pardon the very rough chart.)
This appears to be a fairly good fit[3], and results in the following trend/formula:
This is an exponentially-decreasing trend... but towards a decidedly positive horizontal asymptote.
This essentially indicates that we will get minimal future scaling, if any. $37.71/MWh is already within the given range.
For reference, here's what the best fit looks like if you try to force a zero asymptote:
This is fairly obviously a significantly worse fit[5].
Why do you believe that solar has an asymptote towards zero cost?[6]
fossils usually don't need storage
Absolutely, which is one of the reasons why... (read more)
Too bad. My suspects for confounders for that sort of thing would be 'you played less at the start/end of term' or 'you were more distracted at the start/end of term'.
First, nuclear power is expensive compared to the cheapest forms of renewable energy and is even outcompeted by other “conventional” generation sources [...] The consequence of the current price tag of nuclear power is that in competitive electricity markets it often just can’t compete with cheaper forms of generation.
[snip chart]
Source: Lazard
This estimate does not seem to include capacity factors or cost of required energy storage, assuming I read it correctly. Do you have an estimate that does?
Thirdly, nuclear power gives you energy independence. This became very clear during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. France, for example, had much fewer problems cutting ties with Russia than e.g. Germany. While countries might still have to import Uranium, the global supplies are distributed more evenly than with fossil fuels, thereby decreasing geopolitical relevance. Uranium can be found nearly everywhere.
Also, you can extract uranium from seawater. This has its own problems, and is still more expensive than mines currently. However, this puts a cap on the cost of uranium for any (non-landlocked) country, which is a very good thing for contingency purposes.
(Also, there are silly amounts of uranium in seawater. 35 million tons of land-based reserves, and 4.6 billion in seawater. At very low concentrations, but still.)
How much did you play during the start / end of term compared to normal?
(Meta/site question.)
I have all settings related to comment hiding disabled[1] (do not collapse comments / do not truncate comments in large threads / do not truncate comments on home page)[2]. However, today I noted that comments appear to be hidden some of the time regardless[3].
This appears to be a recent regression[4][5]. I do note that there have been some other QoL changes recently ( code, improved behavior, etc).
Is there a way to turn this behaviour off?
That is, set. Yay negative options.
In general, I do not believe information hiding is a good idea[6]. I am willing to publicly discuss this elsewhere; please not on this question.
As an example, when opening this link: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/F5EmBWyryhgNtqsKb/convoy-crackdown?commentId=E9KdstpkKMX59bhMh I get
Consider the following bot:
NQCoopBot := defect against X iff X is DefectBot, else cooperate with X
FairBot will cooperate with NQCoopBot, even though FairBot could fairly trivially safely defect.
PrudentBot will also cooperate with NQCoopBot, even though PrudentBot could fairly trivially safely defect.
However, the entire reason why PrudentBot exists is to try to overcome the shortcoming whereby FairBot will cooperate even in situations where the opponent fairly trivially cooperates regardless.
Is there a PrudentBot variant that doesn't cooperate with NQCoopBot? (Aside from brittle approaches like 'Will defect against X if either (X == NQCoopBot) or (PrudentBot would defect against X)' that is.)
One of the problems with simulating cells is that cells are rather complex. To help with this, researchers optimized cells towards simplicity (by, among other things, successively removing genes and seeing if the cell still functioned). They then took said cells and analyzed them as best they could.
Today[1] in 'incremental advances in bottom-up simulation research' we have this.
As it turns out, these cells are simple enough (and well-understood enough) that they are feasible to simulate over an entire cell division cycle[2]. It's not a perfect simulation for various reasons, but still is progress[3].
(It's when simulating and explaining a human neuron in this fashion becomes feasible that things become interesting.)
January 20th, really, but it seems
Is there a way to get a link to a straight chronological view of all posts on LW?
The closest I've found is going to All Posts, selecting sorted by New, timeframe of Daily, selecting Low Karma, then scrolling down and hitting 'load more[1]', then scrolling back to the top:
...however this:
...for each day. Potentially repeatedly.
This entire site is laggy[5], to the point where it honestly pushes me away from interacting with the site. Then again I'm one of those people who notices the difference between 144Hz monitors with
My comments on LessWrong, and indeed most sites, tend to skew negative, especially for toplevel comments.
My votes on LessWrong, and indeed most sites, tend to skew positive, especially for toplevel posts and comments.
I have come to a realization as to why this is. Take two hypothetical posts:
Post A is a perfect post[1]. It coherently and completely describes an obviously-correct-only-in-hindsight argument far more eloquently than I ever could, from premises that I assign a very high probability to.
Post B is a terrible post. It incoherently and incompletely describes an obviously-incorrect argument in an inelequent fashion, from premises that I assign a very low probability to.
My typical reaction upon seeing these two posts is... (read more)
Bug report[1]: in the default editor typing a space[2] after an inline LaTeX equation at the end of the line deletes all text on the line from the first inline LaTeX equation on the line onwards[3].
For A instance: B
If I hit space after the end of the above paragraph, it becomes:
For A
You can work around this in several ways, but it's annoying at best:
I have hit this several times, and have actually lost (a trivial amount of) work due to the... (read more)
Interesting.
If you're stating that generic intelligence was not likely simulated, but generic intelligence in our situation was likely simulated...
Doesn't that fall afoul of the mediocrity principle applied to generic intelligence overall?
(As an aside, this does somewhat conflate 'intelligence' and 'computation'; I am assuming that intelligence requires at least some non-zero amount of computation. It's good to make this assumption explicit I suppose.)