All of Vanilla_cabs's Comments + Replies

I'm not an expert, but assuming that by revolution you mean something close to "an attempt to change government through non-legal means", then I agree with your points, but I'll also note that revolt and revolution only partially overlap. Revolts are typically less organised and with more modest goals than a government overthrow. They are also mostly initiated and fueled by the resentment and desperation of a lower class.

My tentative model is "Starving peasants revolt. Kings don't like revolts." Not "Starving peasants lead successful revolutions."

To take a... (read more)

Yes, it seems I read too fast.

It seems to be of French origin. The name is French and the French cuisine adopted first. The main hypothesis for its apparition is that Richelieu's cook invented it out of lack of alternative ingredients while occupying the city of Mahon in Spain. Source: same as you.

Chef' just means 'chief' in french (like the military rank or the man in charge) and comes from the brigade system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigade_de_cuisine)

In addition, in the context of cooking, chef means "cook", and it's common to call the cook "chef", even if it's your friend who's making a barbecue. It has positive connotations, implying that the cook is skilled.

That could also explain why French bakeries, with their staple and iconic baguette and croissant, seem to be faring better in my experience.

I can't help but notice that if for you "nothing else could have happened than what happened", then your definition of "could have happened" is so narrow as to become trivial.

Rather, I think that by "X could have happened in situation Y", the laymen mean something like: even with the knowledge of hindsight, in a situation that looks identical to situation Y for the parameters that matter, I could not exclude X happening".

I was just curious and wanted to give you the occasion to expand your viewpoint. I didn't downvote your comment btw.

In what ways?

I think the bigger difference between humans and chimps is the high prosocial-ness of humans. this is what allowed humans to evolve complex cultures that now bear a large part of our knowledge and intuitions. And the lack of that prosocial-ness is the biggest obstacle to teaching chimps math.

I think I already replied to this when I wrote:

I think all the methods that aim at forcing the Gatekeeper to disconnect are against the spirit of the experiment.

I just don't see how, in a real life situation, disconnecting would equate to freeing the AI. The rule is artificially added to prevent cheap strategies from the Gatekeeper. In return, there's nothing wrong to adding rules to prevent cheap strategies from the AI.

But econ growth does not necessarily mean better lives on average if there are also more humans to feed and shelter. In the current context, if you want more ideas, you'd have a better ROI by investing in education.

Unless humanity destroys itself first, something like Horizon Worlds will inevitably become a massive success. A digital world is better than the physical world because it lets us override the laws of physics. In a digital world, we can duplicate items at will, cover massive distances instantaneously, make crime literally impossible, and much, much more. A digital world is to the real world as Microsoft Word is to a sheet of paper. The digital version has too many advantages to count.

Either there will be limitations or not. No limitations means that you ca... (read more)

It comes with a cultural relativism claim that a morality of a culture isn't wrong, just conflicting to your morals. And this is also probably right.

How can this work? Cultures change. So which is morally right, the culture before the change, or the culture after the change?

I guess a reply could be "Before the change, the culture before the change is right. After the change, the culture after the change is right." But in this view, "being morally right" carries no information. We cannot assess whether a culture deserves to be changed based on this view.

Thanks everyone :)

Initially, I was expecting a "no", but being denied a reply is arguably a stronger rejection experience.

Finally, willy finished his makeshift guide rope and lowered it to the rescuers.

Finally, Toni finished his makeshift guide rope and lowered it to the rescuers.

The AI only needs to escape. Once it's out, it has leisure to design virtually infinite social experiments to refine its "human manipulation" skill: sending phishing emails, trying romantic interactions on dating apps, trying to create a popular cat videos youtube channel without anyone guessing that it's all deepfake, and many more. Failing any of these would barely have any negative consequence.

Yes, but I don't know if he really did it. I see multiple problems with that implementation. First, the interest rate should be adjusted for inflation, otherwise the bet is about a much larger class of events than "end of the world".

Next, there's a high risk that the "doom" better will have spent all their money by the time the bet expires. The "survivor" better will never see the color of their money anyway.

Finally, I don't think it's interesting to win if the world ends. I think what's more interesting is rallying doubters before it's too late, in order to marginally raise our chances of survival.

It's nice that you're open to betting. What unambiguous sign would change your mind, about the speed of AGI takeover, long enough before it happens that you'd still have time to make a positive impact afterwards? Nobody is interested in winning a bet where winning means "mankind gets wiped".

Basically, a "wait a decade quietly" strategy

I was thinking more like "ten weeks". That's a long time for an AGI to place its clone-agents and prepare a strike.

If you are really insisting that the only views that matter are inside views, well, that sounds more like religion than rational consideration.

If I did, why would I have replied to your outside view argument with another outside view argument?

If you had said "you hold inside view to be generally more accurate than outside view", well yeah, I don't think that's disputed here.

How would it lead to being defeated by a different AGI? That's not obvious for me.

I suspect that a hostile AGI will have no problem taking over a supercomputer and then staying dormant until the moment it has overwhelming advantage over the world. All there would be to notice would be an unexplained spike of activity one afternoon.

Q: What makes you think that?

A: We live in a complex world where successfully pulling off a plan that kills everyone and in a short of time might be beyond what is achievable, the same way that winning against AlphaZero giving it a 20 stone handicap is impossible even by a God- like entity with infinite computational resources

Still waiting to hear your arguments here. "It just might be impossible to pull off complex plan X" is just too vague a claim to discuss.

Of course, to anyone who has studied the question in depth, that's a bad argument, but I'm trying to taylor my reply to someone who claims (direct quote of the first 2 sentences) being inclined to think that fear of rogue AI is a product of American culture if it doesn't exist outside of the USA.

Nothing aggressive with noting that it's a superficial factor. Maybe it would have come off better if I had use the LW term "outside view", but it only came back to me now.

Yes, the Japanese don't fear AIs as the Americans do. But also, most of the recent main progress in AI has been done in the Western world. It makes sense to me that the ones at the forefront of the technology are also the ones who spot dangers early on.

Also, since superficial factors have a sway on you (not a criticism, it's a good heuristic if you don't have much time/resources to spend on studying the subject deeper), the ones who show the most understanding of the topic and/or general competence by getting at the forefront should have bonus credibility, shouldn't they?

Or better put, I can conceive many reasons why this plan fails.

Then could you produce a few of the main ones, to allow for examination?

Also, I don't see how see build those factories in the first place and we can't use that time window to make the AGI to produce explicit results on AGI safety

What's the time window in your scenario? As I noted in a different comment, I can agree with "days" as you initially stated. That's barely enough time for the EA community to notice there's a problem.

I downvoted this post for the lack of arguments (besides the main argument from incredulity).

I am saying that I believe that an AGI could theoretically kill all humans because it is not only a matter of being very intelligent.

Typo? (could not kill all humans)

I might have missed it, but it seems to be the first time you talk about "months" in your scenario. Wasn't it "days" before? It matters because I don't think it would take months for an AGI to built a nanotech factory.

Can you verify code to be sure there's no virus in it? It took years of trial and error to patch up some semblance of internet security. A single flaw in your nanotech factory is all a hostile AI would need.

The diversity of outlets that you desire sounds to journalism what diversity of products is for markets generally. It is generally agreed that free markets are more efficient than centralized planning. Why not do the same for media? It's not like there's a lack of independent or outsider funded media trying to survive while providing a different angle. But they're not the targets of government funding. I don't see how more funding could make it easier for those dissenting media to compete.

The EU already dictates a large part of the policy of its states, and the official media in said states are already massively pro-EU. What makes you think an EU owned media would be a good idea to correct that in the first place?

Ok but what's the takeaway for us who do not know the context?

I can't point you in a precise direction, but I've seen the idea showing up sporadically for more than a decade now. The current voting system is obviously absurd and the root cause of many problems, but the obstacle to change is not a lack of viable alternatives, nor a lack of clever people convinced that at least it's worth trying. Alternative voting systems have been implemented and work well. For example, in France there was a website (Parlement et Citoyens) that allowed people to vote on individual laws, lay out arguments for and against, propose amen... (read more)

Can we expect another chapter? I want to know what happens next!

Actually I fully agree with that. I just have the impression that your choice of words suggested that Dave was being lazy or not fully honest, and I would disagree with that. I think he's probably honestly laying his best arguments for what he truly believes.

Fair enough. If you don't have the time/desire/ability to look at the alignment problem arguments in detail, going by "so far, all doomsday predictions turned out false" is a good, cheap, first-glance heuristic. Of course, if you eventually manage to get into the specifics of AGI alignment, you should discard that heuristic and instead let the (more direct) evidence guide your judgement.

Talking about predictions, there's been an AI winter a few decades ago, when most predictions of rapid AI progress turned out completely wrong. But recently, it's the oppos... (read more)

I don't think that a fair assessment of what they said. They cite their years as evidence that they witnessed multiple doomsday predictions that turned out wrong. That's a fine point.

• Ascendance of a Bookworm
• The Saga of Tanya the Evil

Both are reincarnation isekai where the protagonist uses memories from her past life to her strategic advantage.

• Crystal Trilogy

Probably, and it's not a bad assumption. I'd imagine that donation to charities would vary wildly between candidates. But it's still an assumption, and his argument is not as airtight as he makes it appear.

May I add one downside? Vaccines are expensive and ultimately paid by the community.

I've heard on at least 3 different occasions people around me arguing that the unvaccinated were unconscious of how costly it would be if they ended up hospitalized. It upsets me that it never seems to dawn on them that vaccines are not free.

Even if the government has already bought the doses, taking one justifies that spending, and incentivizes them to buy more.

[...] the marginal difference between hiring you and hiring the next bioinformatician in line is (to us) negligible. Whether or not you (personally) choose to work for us will produce an insignificant net effect on our operations. The impact on your personal finances, however, will be significant. You could easily offset the marginal negative impact of working for us by donating a fraction of your surplus income to altruistic causes instead,"

Double standard: when considering the negative effect of her work, he compares her with the next in line, but when considering the positive effect of her donations, he doesn't.

My personal experience agrees with the phases, but I'd triple all durations. Hunger is stronger for me the first 2 to 3 days. Then it's smooth sailing. The fuzziness appears at the same time, 2 to 3 days.

Possibly, but I doubt the same can be said for the net hedon loss. The great-uncle who died of COVID may have been quite old, but he still probably had a few years ahead of him

In terms of hedons, many old people live in retirement homes under horrendous conditions. Some lose their marbles, I remember one who every day tried to escape while claiming "I have to take care of my goats!" Some forget that their loved ones are dead, only to relearn it and be sad again. Some have chronic pains. Some shit themselves because they can't control their sphincters anymo... (read more)

babies are likely more resilient than we think and this loss will be temporary

What makes you think so? My prior is that 'babies are more resilient than we think' is a fashionable idea because the opposite would be tantamount to blaming parents, especially poor ones, and that's unfashionable. I'm interested in learning more about the topic.

I think he means that your argument:

When it's not socially acceptable to have a frank discussion of the real costs and benefits of various restrictions, it becomes easier for people who oppose the restrictions to pretend that the benefits of the restrictions don't exist (aka the disease isn't real or isn't serious).

also applies this way:

When it's not socially acceptable to have a frank discussion of the real costs and benefits of various restrictions, it becomes easier for people who support the restrictions to pretend that the costs of the restrictions do... (read more)

Somehow you managed to transcribe my experience almost exactly.

I probably got Covid in March 2020, despite being more careful about it than most people around me. It was almost inevitable due to the place I lived. My symptoms were even milder than the ones you describe, I didn't lose the sense of smell or taste. When I called the doctors, I was told to stay home unless (or until) I was in need for hospitalization.

Now we're 2 years in. Nobody in my Dunbar-sized group died or needed hospitalization due to Covid. The overwhelming majority of the impact of the... (read more)