Make a hyperphone. A majority of my alignment research conversations would be enhanced by having a hyperphone, to a degree somewhere between a lot and extremely; and this is heavily weighted on the most hopeworthy conversations. (Also sometimes when I explain what a hyperphone is well enough for the other person to get it, and then we have a complex conversation, they agree that it would be good. But very small N, like 3 to 5.)
That would be great! And it’s exactly the sort of thing we’ve dreamed about building at AE since the start.
Incidentally, I’ve practiced something (inferior) like this with my wife in the past and we’ve gotten good at speaking simultaneously and actually understanding multiple threads at the same time (though it seems to break down if one of the threads is particularly complex).
It seems like an MVP hyperphone could potentially just be a software project/not explicitly require BCI (though certainly would be enhanced with it). We would definitely consider building it, at least as a Same Day Skunkworks. Are you aware of any existing tool that’s at all like this?
You might also enjoy this blog post, which talks about how easily good ideas can be lost and why a tool like this could be so high value.
My favorite quotes from the piece:
1. “While ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.” 2. “You need to recognize those barely formed thoughts, thoughts which are usually wrong and poorly formed in many ways, but which have some kernel of originality and importance and truth. And if they seem important enough to be worth pursuing, you construct a creative cocoon around them, a set of stories you tell yourself to protect the idea not just from others, but from your own self doubts. The purpose of those stories isn’t to be an air tight defence. It’s to give you the confidence to nurture the idea, possibly for years, to find out if there’s something really there. 3. “And so, even someone who has extremely high standards for the final details of their work, may have an important component to their thinking which relies on rather woolly arguments. And they may well need to cling to that cocoon. Perhaps other approaches are possible. But my own experience is that this is often the case.”
Make a hyperphone. A majority of my alignment research conversations would be enhanced by having a hyperphone, to a degree somewhere between a lot and extremely; and this is heavily weighted on the most hopeworthy conversations. (Also sometimes when I explain what a hyperphone is well enough for the other person to get it, and then we have a complex conversation, they agree that it would be good. But very small N, like 3 to 5.)
https://tsvibt.blogspot.com/2023/01/hyperphone.html
That would be great! And it’s exactly the sort of thing we’ve dreamed about building at AE since the start.
Incidentally, I’ve practiced something (inferior) like this with my wife in the past and we’ve gotten good at speaking simultaneously and actually understanding multiple threads at the same time (though it seems to break down if one of the threads is particularly complex).
It seems like an MVP hyperphone could potentially just be a software project/not explicitly require BCI (though certainly would be enhanced with it). We would definitely consider building it, at least as a Same Day Skunkworks. Are you aware of any existing tool that’s at all like this?
You might also enjoy this blog post, which talks about how easily good ideas can be lost and why a tool like this could be so high value.
My favorite quotes from the piece:
1. “While ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.”
2. “You need to recognize those barely formed thoughts, thoughts which are usually wrong and poorly formed in many ways, but which have some kernel of originality and importance and truth. And if they seem important enough to be worth pursuing, you construct a creative cocoon around them, a set of stories you tell yourself to protect the idea not just from others, but from your own self doubts. The purpose of those stories isn’t to be an air tight defence. It’s to give you the confidence to nurture the idea, possibly for years, to find out if there’s something really there.
3. “And so, even someone who has extremely high standards for the final details of their work, may have an important component to their thinking which relies on rather woolly arguments. And they may well need to cling to that cocoon. Perhaps other approaches are possible. But my own experience is that this is often the case.”