LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

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Timaeus’s First Four Months Feb 29, 2024

Show notes

Timaeus was announced in late October 2023, with the mission of making fundamental breakthroughs in technical AI alignment using deep ideas from mathematics and the sciences. This is our first progress update.
In service of the mission, our first priority has been to support and contribute to ongoing work in Singular Learning Theory (SLT) and developmental interpretability, with the aim of laying theoretical and empirical foundations for a science of deep learning and neural network interpretability.
Our main uncertainties in this research were:

Is SLT useful in deep learning? While SLT is mathematically established, it was not clear whether the central quantities of SLT could be estimated at sufficient scale, and whether SLT's predictions actually held for realistic models (esp. language models).
Does structure in neural networks form in phase transitions? The idea of developmental interpretability was to view phase transitions as a core primitive in the [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
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First published:
February 28th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Quht2AY6A5KNeZFEA/timaeus-s-first-four-months
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Contra Ngo et al. “Every ‘Every Bay Area House Party’ Bay Area House Party” Feb 23, 2024

Show notes

This is a linkpost for https://bayesshammai.substack.com/p/contra-ngo-et-al-every-every-bayWith thanks to Scott Alexander for the inspiration, Jeffrey Ladish, Philip Parker, Avital Morris, and Drake Thomas for masterful cohosting, and Richard Ngo for his investigative journalism.
Last summer, I threw an Every Bay Area House Party themed party. I don’t live in the Bay, but I was there for a construction-work-slash-webforum-moderation-and-UI-design-slash-grantmaking gig, so I took the opportunity to impose myself on the ever generous Jeffrey Ladish and host a party in his home. Fortunately, the inside of his house is already optimized to look like a parody of a Bay Area house party house, so not much extra decorating was needed, but when has that ever stopped me?
Attendees could look through the window for an outside viewRichard Ngo recently covered the event, with only very minor embellishments. I’ve heard rumors that some people are doubting whether the party described truly happened, so [...]
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First published:
February 22nd, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mmYFF4dyi8Kg6pWGC/contra-ngo-et-al-every-every-bay-area-house-party-bay-area
Linkpost URL:
https://bayesshammai.substack.com/p/contra-ngo-et-al-every-every-bay
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[HUMAN VOICE] "Updatelessness doesn't solve most problems" by Martín Soto Feb 20, 2024

Show notes

Support ongoing human narrations of LessWrong's curated posts:
www.patreon.com/LWCurated
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/g8HHKaWENEbqh2mgK/updatelessness-doesn-t-solve-most-problems-1
Narrated for LessWrong by Perrin Walker.
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[HUMAN VOICE] "And All the Shoggoths Merely Players" by Zack_M_Davis Feb 20, 2024

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Support ongoing human narrations of LessWrong's curated posts:
www.patreon.com/LWCurated
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8yCXeafJo67tYe5L4/and-all-the-shoggoths-merely-players
Narrated for LessWrong by Perrin Walker.
Share feedback on this narration.
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Every “Every Bay Area House Party” Bay Area House Party Feb 19, 2024

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Inspired by a house party inspired by Scott Alexander.
By the time you arrive in Berkeley, the party is already in full swing. You’ve come late because your reading of the polycule graph indicated that the first half would be inauspicious. But now you’ve finally made it to the social event of the season: the Every Bay Area House Party-themed house party.
The first order of the evening is to get a color-coded flirting wristband, so that you don’t incur any accidental micromarriages. You scan the menu of options near the door. There's the wristband for people who aren’t interested in flirting; the wristband for those want to be flirted with, but will never flirt back; the wristband for those who only want to flirt with people who have different-colored wristbands; and of course the one for people who want to glomarize disclosure of their flirting preferences. Finally you [...]
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First published:
February 16th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/g5q4JiG5dzafkdyEN/every-every-bay-area-house-party-bay-area-house-party
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

2023 Survey Results Feb 19, 2024

Show notes

The Data
0. Population
There were 558 responses over 32 days. The spacing and timing of the responses had hills and valleys because of an experiment I was performing where I'd get the survey advertised in a different place, then watch how many new responses happened in the day or two after that.
Previous surveys have been run over the last decade or so.
2009: 166
2011: 1090
2012: 1195
2013: 1636
2014: 1503
2016: 3083
2017: "About 300"
2020: 61
2022: 186
2023: 558
Last year when I got a hundred and eighty six responses, I said that the cheerfully optimistic interpretation was "cool! I got about as many as Scott did on his first try!" This time I got around half of what Scott did on his second try. A thousand responses feels pretty firmly achievable.
This is also the tenth such [...]
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First published:
February 16th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WRaq4SzxhunLoFKCs/2023-survey-results
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Raising children on the eve of AI Feb 18, 2024

Show notes

Cross-posted with light edits from Otherwise.
I think of us in some kind of twilight world as transformative AI looks more likely: things are about to change, and I don’t know if it's about to get a lot darker or a lot brighter.
Increasingly this makes me wonder how I should be raising my kids differently.
What might the world look like
Most of my imaginings about my children's lives have them in pretty normal futures, where they go to college and have jobs and do normal human stuff, but with better phones.
It's hard for me to imagine the other versions:

A lot of us are killed or incapacitated by AI
More war, pandemics, and general chaos
Post-scarcity utopia, possibly with people living as uploads
Some other weird outcome I haven’t imagined

Even in the world where change is slower, more like the speed [...]
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First published:
February 15th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cyqrvE3dk5apg54Sk/raising-children-on-the-eve-of-ai
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“No-one in my org puts money in their pension” Feb 17, 2024

Show notes

This is a linkpost for https://seekingtobejolly.substack.com/p/no-one-in-my-org-puts-money-in-theirEpistemic status: the stories here are all as true as possible from memory, but my memory is so so.
An AI made this This is going to be big
It's late Summer 2017. I am on a walk in the Mendip Hills. It's warm and sunny and the air feels fresh. With me are around 20 other people from the Effective Altruism London community. We’ve travelled west for a retreat to discuss how to help others more effectively with our donations and careers. As we cross cow field after cow field, I get talking to one of the people from the group I don’t know yet. He seems smart, and cheerful. He tells me that he is an AI researcher at Google DeepMind. He explains how he is thinking about how to make sure that any powerful AI system actually does what we want it [...]
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First published:
February 16th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLXdCjxbJMGtDBWTH/no-one-in-my-org-puts-money-in-their-pension
Linkpost URL:
https://seekingtobejolly.substack.com/p/no-one-in-my-org-puts-money-in-their
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Masterpiece Feb 16, 2024

Show notes

This is a linkpost for https://www.narrativeark.xyz/p/masterpieceA sequel to qntm's Lena. Reading Lena first is helpful but not necessary.
We’re excited to announce the fourth annual MMindscaping competition! Over the last few years, interest in the art of mindscaping has continued to grow rapidly. We expect this year's competition to be our biggest yet, and we’ve expanded the prize pool to match. The theme for the competition is “Weird and Wonderful”—we want your wackiest ideas and most off-the-wall creations!
Competition rules
As in previous competitions, the starting point is a base MMAcevedo mind upload. All entries must consist of a single modified version of MMAcevedo, along with a written or recorded description of the sequence of transformations or edits which produced it. For more guidance on which mind-editing techniques can be used, see the Technique section below.
Your entry must have been created in the last 12 months, and cannot [...]
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First published:
February 13th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Fruv7Mmk3X5EekbgB/masterpiece
Linkpost URL:
https://www.narrativeark.xyz/p/masterpiece
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

CFAR Takeaways: Andrew Critch Feb 15, 2024

Show notes

I'm trying to build my own art of rationality training, and I've started talking to various CFAR instructors about their experiences – things that might be important for me to know but which hadn't been written up nicely before.
This is a quick write up of a conversation with Andrew Critch about his takeaways. (I took rough notes, and then roughly cleaned them up for this. I don't know
"What surprised you most during your time at CFAR?
Surprise 1: People are profoundly non-numerate.
And, people who are not profoundly non-numerate still fail to connect numbers to life.
I'm still trying to find a way to teach people to apply numbers for their life. For example: "This thing is annoying you. How many minutes is it annoying you today? how many days will it annoy you?". I compulsively do this. There aren't things lying around in [...]
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First published:
February 14th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jash4Gbi2wpThzZ4k/cfar-takeaways-andrew-critch
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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