As a person not affiliated with Conjecture, I want to record some of my scattered reactions. A lot of upvotes on such a post without substantial comments seems… unfair?
On one hand, it is always interesting to read something like that. Many of us have pondered Conjecture, asking ourselves whether what they are doing and the way they are doing it make sense. E.g. their infohazard policy has been remarkable, super-interesting, and controversial. My own reflections on that have been rather involved and complicated.
On the other hand, when I am reading the included Conjecture response, what they are saying there seems to me to make total sense (if I were in an artificial binary position of having to fully side with the post or with them, I would have sided with Conjecture on this). Although one has to note that their https://www.conjecture.dev/a-standing-offer-for-public-discussions-on-ai/ is returning a 404 at the moment. Is that offer still standing?
Specifically, on their research quality, the Simulator theory has certainly been controversial, but many people find it extremely valuable, and I personally tend to recommend it to people as the most important conceptual breakthrough of 2022 (in my opinion) (together with the notes I took on the subject) . It is particularly valuable as a deconfusion tool on what LLMs are and aren’t, and I found that framing the LLM-related problems in terms of properties of simulation runs and in terms of sculpting and controlling the simulations is very productive. So I am super-greatful for that part of their research output.
On the other hand, I did notice that the authors of that work and Conjecture had parted ways (and when I noticed that I told myself, “perhaps I don’t need to follow that org all that closely anymore, although it is still a remarkable org”).
I think what makes writing comments on posts like this one difficult is that the post is really structured and phrased in such a way as to make this a situation of personal conflict, internal to the relatively narrow AI safety community.
I have not downvoted the post, but I don’t like this aspect, I am not sure this is the right way to approach things...
I am afraid, this is a more persistent problem (or, perhaps, it comes and goes, but I am even trying browsers I don’t normally use (in addition to hard reload on those I do normally use), and it still returns 404).
I’ll be testing this further occasionally… (You might want to check whether anyone else who does not have privileged access to your systems is seeing it at the moment; some systems like, for example, GitHub often show 404 to people who don’t have access to an actually existing file instead of showing 403 as one would normally expect.)
In their response to us they told us this offer was still standing.
A lot of upvotes on such a post without substantial comments seems… unfair?
As of the time of your comment, we believe there were about 8 votes and 30 karma and the post had been up a few hours. We are not sure what voting frequency is on LW (e.g. we’re not sure if this is higher or lower than average?) but if it’s higher, some hypotheses (we’d love to hear inputs from folks who have upvoted without a comment):
Some people are supportive of criticism in general, and may have upvoted to support more critical discussion (even though they may disagree with object level comments)
Some people who upvoted may already agree with the views of this post (e.g. some of the upvoters could be our reviewers)
Some people may have upvoted so this post gets more attention / discussion so they could see what others think of it
Some folks may have upvoted for now and might come back to the post to leave more substantive comments when they have time
I think what makes writing comments on posts like this one difficult is that the post is really structured and phrased in such a way as to make this a situation of personal conflict, internal to the relatively narrow AI safety community.
I have not downvoted the post, but I don’t like this aspect, I am not sure this is the right way to approach things...
If understanding correctly, we think what you’re saying is that because there are many claims in this post, it seems suboptimal that people can’t indicate that via post-level voting.
We think this is a great point. We’d love to see an option for people to agree/disagree with specific claims on posts to provide a more nuanced understanding of where consensus lies. We think it’s very plausible that some of our points will end up being much more controversial than others. (if you wanted to add separate comments for specific claims that people could vote on, we’d love to see that and would be happy to add a note to the top-level post encouraging folks to do so)
Our hope is that folks can comment with areas of disagreement to start a discussion on those points.
As a person not affiliated with Conjecture, I want to record some of my scattered reactions. A lot of upvotes on such a post without substantial comments seems… unfair?
On one hand, it is always interesting to read something like that. Many of us have pondered Conjecture, asking ourselves whether what they are doing and the way they are doing it make sense. E.g. their infohazard policy has been remarkable, super-interesting, and controversial. My own reflections on that have been rather involved and complicated.
On the other hand, when I am reading the included Conjecture response, what they are saying there seems to me to make total sense (if I were in an artificial binary position of having to fully side with the post or with them, I would have sided with Conjecture on this). Although one has to note that their https://www.conjecture.dev/a-standing-offer-for-public-discussions-on-ai/ is returning a 404 at the moment. Is that offer still standing?
Specifically, on their research quality, the Simulator theory has certainly been controversial, but many people find it extremely valuable, and I personally tend to recommend it to people as the most important conceptual breakthrough of 2022 (in my opinion) (together with the notes I took on the subject) . It is particularly valuable as a deconfusion tool on what LLMs are and aren’t, and I found that framing the LLM-related problems in terms of properties of simulation runs and in terms of sculpting and controlling the simulations is very productive. So I am super-greatful for that part of their research output.
On the other hand, I did notice that the authors of that work and Conjecture had parted ways (and when I noticed that I told myself, “perhaps I don’t need to follow that org all that closely anymore, although it is still a remarkable org”).
I think what makes writing comments on posts like this one difficult is that the post is really structured and phrased in such a way as to make this a situation of personal conflict, internal to the relatively narrow AI safety community.
I have not downvoted the post, but I don’t like this aspect, I am not sure this is the right way to approach things...
Apologies for the 404 on the page, it’s an annoying cache bug. Try to hard refresh your browser page (CMD + Shift + R) and it should work.
Works now. Thanks!
I am afraid, this is a more persistent problem (or, perhaps, it comes and goes, but I am even trying browsers I don’t normally use (in addition to hard reload on those I do normally use), and it still returns 404).
I’ll be testing this further occasionally… (You might want to check whether anyone else who does not have privileged access to your systems is seeing it at the moment; some systems like, for example, GitHub often show 404 to people who don’t have access to an actually existing file instead of showing 403 as one would normally expect.)
Thanks for commenting and sharing your reactions Mishka.
Some quick notes on what you’ve shared:
In their response to us they told us this offer was still standing.
As of the time of your comment, we believe there were about 8 votes and 30 karma and the post had been up a few hours. We are not sure what voting frequency is on LW (e.g. we’re not sure if this is higher or lower than average?) but if it’s higher, some hypotheses (we’d love to hear inputs from folks who have upvoted without a comment):
Some people are supportive of criticism in general, and may have upvoted to support more critical discussion (even though they may disagree with object level comments)
Some people who upvoted may already agree with the views of this post (e.g. some of the upvoters could be our reviewers)
Some people may have upvoted so this post gets more attention / discussion so they could see what others think of it
Some folks may have upvoted for now and might come back to the post to leave more substantive comments when they have time
If understanding correctly, we think what you’re saying is that because there are many claims in this post, it seems suboptimal that people can’t indicate that via post-level voting.
We think this is a great point. We’d love to see an option for people to agree/disagree with specific claims on posts to provide a more nuanced understanding of where consensus lies. We think it’s very plausible that some of our points will end up being much more controversial than others. (if you wanted to add separate comments for specific claims that people could vote on, we’d love to see that and would be happy to add a note to the top-level post encouraging folks to do so)
Our hope is that folks can comment with areas of disagreement to start a discussion on those points.