It is completely unintentional that this is an SIAI fundraiser—the deal is that Clippy gives me money, and when I told Clippy via PM that he needed to give me $1000 immediately for me to continue spending my cognitive resources engaging him, I thought allowing Clippy the option of donating to SIAI instead of giving it directly to me made Clippy’s acausal puppetmaster much more likely to actually go through with the deal.
I am still waiting confirmation that the donation has gone through and that I am not being epically trolled.
Then could you explain the fuzzy math involved? How does 50,000 minus 1000 equal 48,677.5 instead of 49,000?
(While you’re at it, please provide any evidence you’re aware of that explains how this is not a … questionable … attempt to trick posters into giving you money.)
After I told Clippy that delivery of the money in two years was acceptable, Clippy proposed getting a bonus for early delivery, and I agreed to 15%/year.
So $50,000 − 1000*1.15^2 = 48677.5.
Perhaps some could see this as a questionable attempt to trick Clippy into giving me money, but I do intend to fulfill my promise of delivering the paperclips 50 years from now. I’m not asking any posters besides Clippy to give me money. This top-level post by Clippy does read like an attempt to trick people into giving me money, but I’m not Clippy and I think that this top-level post is a not very good idea that has 0+ chance of actually happening.
Btw, Clippy claims that the check in the mail to SIAI was sent last Wednesday and I have not yet received confirmation that SIAI got it. :(
Next they’re going to try actual Pascal’s Muggings on people. They can even do it more plausibly than in the original scenario — go up to people with a laptop and say “On this laptop is an advanced AI that will convert the universe to paperclips if released. Donate money to us or we’ll turn it on!”
Wow! Now that you mention that article, I think I had solved the unsolved problem Eliezer describes in it, back in a discussion from a month ago, not realizing that my position on it wasn’t the standard one here!
Someone tell me if I’m missing something here: Eliezer is saying that utility that a hypothesis predicts (from a course of action) can increase much faster than the length of the hypothesis. Therefore, you could feed an ideal AI a prediction that is improbable, but with a large enough utility to make it nevertheless highly important. This would force the AI to give in to Pascal’s muggings.
My response (which I assumed was the consensus!) was that, when you permit a hypothesis long enough to associate that mega-utility with that course of action, you are already looking at very long hypotheses. When you allow all of those into consideration, you will necessarily allow hypotheses with similar probability but believe the opposite utility from that COA.
Because the mugger has not offered evidence to favor his/her hypothesis over the opposite, you assign, on net, no significant expected (dis)utility to what the mugger claims to do.
If a normal mugger holds up a gun and says “Give me money or I’ll shoot you”, we consider the alternate hypotheses that the mugger will only shoot you if you do give er the money, or that the mugger will give you millions of dollars to reward your bravery if you refuse. But the mugger’s word itself, and our theory of mind on the things that tend to motivate muggers, make both of these much less likely than the garden-variety hypothesis that the mugger will shoot you if you don’t give the money. Further, this holds true whether the mugger claims er weapon is a gun, a ray gun, or a black hole generator; the credibility that the mugger can pull off er threat decreases if e says e has a black hole generator, but not the general skew in favor of worse results for not giving the money.
Why does that skew go away if the mugger claims to be holding an unfriendly AI or the threat of divine judgment some other Pascal-level weapon?
Your argument only seems to hold if there is no mugger and we’re considering abstract principles—ie maybe I should clap my hands on the tiny chance that it might set into effect a chain reaction that will save 3^^^3 lives. In those cases, I agree with you; but as soon as a mugger gets into the picture e provides more information and skews the utilities in favor of one action.
But that’s easy to solve. If you’ve already seen evidence that the mugger is someone who strongly keeps promises then you’ve now have enough reason to believe them to put the direction in favor of the mugger releasing the the AI. One doesn’t necessarily even need that because humans more often tell the truth than lie, and more often keep their promises than break them. Once the probability of the mugger doing what they threaten is a tiny bit over 1⁄2, Pascal’s mugging still is a threat.
Maybe not. Game theoretically, making yourself visibly vulnerable to Pascal’s Muggings may guarantee that they will occur, making them cease to constitute evidence.
I’ve actually just expanded on this idea in the original Pascal’s Mugging article. If the Mugger’s claims are in no way associated with you or similar muggings, then conceivably you should take the probability at face value. But if that’s not the case, then the probability of a direct manipulation attempt should also be taken into consideration, negating the increase in claimed utility.
SIAI has weird fundraisers.
It is completely unintentional that this is an SIAI fundraiser—the deal is that Clippy gives me money, and when I told Clippy via PM that he needed to give me $1000 immediately for me to continue spending my cognitive resources engaging him, I thought allowing Clippy the option of donating to SIAI instead of giving it directly to me made Clippy’s acausal puppetmaster much more likely to actually go through with the deal.
I am still waiting confirmation that the donation has gone through and that I am not being epically trolled.
Then could you explain the fuzzy math involved? How does 50,000 minus 1000 equal 48,677.5 instead of 49,000?
(While you’re at it, please provide any evidence you’re aware of that explains how this is not a … questionable … attempt to trick posters into giving you money.)
After I told Clippy that delivery of the money in two years was acceptable, Clippy proposed getting a bonus for early delivery, and I agreed to 15%/year.
So $50,000 − 1000*1.15^2 = 48677.5.
Perhaps some could see this as a questionable attempt to trick Clippy into giving me money, but I do intend to fulfill my promise of delivering the paperclips 50 years from now. I’m not asking any posters besides Clippy to give me money. This top-level post by Clippy does read like an attempt to trick people into giving me money, but I’m not Clippy and I think that this top-level post is a not very good idea that has 0+ chance of actually happening.
Btw, Clippy claims that the check in the mail to SIAI was sent last Wednesday and I have not yet received confirmation that SIAI got it. :(
Update: User:Kevin confirms that SIAI has received a donation of 1000 USD with sufficient evidence that it came from me.
Was it paperclipped to a piece of paper, or do you prefer to not let paperclips out of your possession?
Your intution is correct. It was stapled.
Next they’re going to try actual Pascal’s Muggings on people. They can even do it more plausibly than in the original scenario — go up to people with a laptop and say “On this laptop is an advanced AI that will convert the universe to paperclips if released. Donate money to us or we’ll turn it on!”
Wow! Now that you mention that article, I think I had solved the unsolved problem Eliezer describes in it, back in a discussion from a month ago, not realizing that my position on it wasn’t the standard one here!
Someone tell me if I’m missing something here: Eliezer is saying that utility that a hypothesis predicts (from a course of action) can increase much faster than the length of the hypothesis. Therefore, you could feed an ideal AI a prediction that is improbable, but with a large enough utility to make it nevertheless highly important. This would force the AI to give in to Pascal’s muggings.
My response (which I assumed was the consensus!) was that, when you permit a hypothesis long enough to associate that mega-utility with that course of action, you are already looking at very long hypotheses. When you allow all of those into consideration, you will necessarily allow hypotheses with similar probability but believe the opposite utility from that COA.
Because the mugger has not offered evidence to favor his/her hypothesis over the opposite, you assign, on net, no significant expected (dis)utility to what the mugger claims to do.
If a normal mugger holds up a gun and says “Give me money or I’ll shoot you”, we consider the alternate hypotheses that the mugger will only shoot you if you do give er the money, or that the mugger will give you millions of dollars to reward your bravery if you refuse. But the mugger’s word itself, and our theory of mind on the things that tend to motivate muggers, make both of these much less likely than the garden-variety hypothesis that the mugger will shoot you if you don’t give the money. Further, this holds true whether the mugger claims er weapon is a gun, a ray gun, or a black hole generator; the credibility that the mugger can pull off er threat decreases if e says e has a black hole generator, but not the general skew in favor of worse results for not giving the money.
Why does that skew go away if the mugger claims to be holding an unfriendly AI or the threat of divine judgment some other Pascal-level weapon?
Your argument only seems to hold if there is no mugger and we’re considering abstract principles—ie maybe I should clap my hands on the tiny chance that it might set into effect a chain reaction that will save 3^^^3 lives. In those cases, I agree with you; but as soon as a mugger gets into the picture e provides more information and skews the utilities in favor of one action.
But that’s easy to solve. If you’ve already seen evidence that the mugger is someone who strongly keeps promises then you’ve now have enough reason to believe them to put the direction in favor of the mugger releasing the the AI. One doesn’t necessarily even need that because humans more often tell the truth than lie, and more often keep their promises than break them. Once the probability of the mugger doing what they threaten is a tiny bit over 1⁄2, Pascal’s mugging still is a threat.
Maybe not. Game theoretically, making yourself visibly vulnerable to Pascal’s Muggings may guarantee that they will occur, making them cease to constitute evidence.
I’ve actually just expanded on this idea in the original Pascal’s Mugging article. If the Mugger’s claims are in no way associated with you or similar muggings, then conceivably you should take the probability at face value. But if that’s not the case, then the probability of a direct manipulation attempt should also be taken into consideration, negating the increase in claimed utility.
I think that solves it.