avturchin

• avturchinApr 29, 2025, 12:44 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Our Real­ity: A Si­mu­la­tion Run by a Paper­clip Maximizer

  Trying to break out of simulation is a different game than preventing x-risks in base world, and may have even higher utility if we expect almost inevitable extinction.

• avturchinApr 29, 2025, 11:53 AM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Jeffrey Olmo’s comment on: Our Real­ity: A Si­mu­la­tion Run by a Paper­clip Maximizer

  This is true only if we assume that a base reality for our civilization exists at all. But knowing that we are in a simulation shifts the main utility of our existence, which Nesov wrote about above.

  For example, if in some simulation we can break out, this would be a more important event than what is happening in the base reality where we likely go extinct anyway.

  And as the proportion of simulations is very large, even a small chance to break away from inside a simulation, perhaps via negotiation with its owners, has more utility than focusing on base reality.

  This post by EY is about breaking out of a simulationhttps://​​www.lesswrong.com/​​posts/​​5wMcKNAwB6X4mp9og/​​that-alien-message

• avturchinApr 27, 2025, 11:31 PM

  5 points

  −2

  in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Our Real­ity: A Si­mu­la­tion Run by a Paper­clip Maximizer

  I think your position can be oversimplified as follows: ‘Being in a simulation’ makes sense only if it has practical, observable differences. But as most simulations closely match the base world, there are no observable differences. So the claim has no meaning.

  However, in our case, this isn’t true. The fact that we know we are in a simulation ‘destroys’ the simulation, and thus its owners may turn it off or delete those who come too close to discovering they are in a simulation. If I care about the sudden non-existence of my instance, this can be a problem.

  Moreover, if the alien simulation idea is valid, they are simulating possible or even hypothetical worlds, so there are no copies of me in base reality, as there is no relevant base reality (excluding infinite multiverse scenarios here).

  Also, being in an AI-testing simulation has observable consequences for me: I am more likely to observe strange variations of world history or play a role in the success or failure of AI alignment efforts.

  If I know that I am simulated for some purpose, the only thing that matters is what conclusions I prefer the simulation owners will make. But it is not clear to me now, in the case of an alien simulation, what I should want.

  One more consideration is what I call meta-simulation: a simulation in which the owners are testing the ability of simulated minds to guess that they are in a simulation and hack it from inside.

  TLDR: If I know that I am in simulation, simulation+owners is my base reality that matters.

Our Real­ity: A Si­mu­la­tion Run by a Paper­clip Maximizer

• avturchinApr 26, 2025, 11:04 AM

  2 points

  0

  on: [Linkpost] AI War seems un­likely to pre­vent AI Doom

  I want to share a few considerations:

  AI war may eventually collapse to two blocks fighting each other – S.Lem wrote about this in 1959.

  AI war makes s-risks more likely as non-aligned AI may take humans hostage to influence aligned AI.

  AI war may naturally evolve as a continuation of the current drone warfare with automated AI-powered control systems.

• avturchinApr 26, 2025, 10:02 AM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: NullSetOwl’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  I think that SIA is generally* valid but it uses all its power to prove that I live in the infinite universe where all possible observers exist. After that we have to use SSA to find in which region of the multiverse I am more likely to be located.

  *I think that the logically sound version of SIA is “if I am in a unique position, generated by some random process, then there were many attempts to create me” – like many earth-like-but-lifeless planets are in the galaxy.

  Another point is that the larger number of short civilizations can compensate for their “shortness.” We can live in the region of multiverse where there are many short civilizations and almost all of them die off.

• avturchinApr 24, 2025, 1:31 PM

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: rnollet’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  May be we better take equation (2) from the original Gott’s work https://​​gwern.net/​​doc/​​existential-risk/​​1993-gott.pdf:

  1 /​ 3 t < T < 3t with 50 per cent confidence,

  
  in which T is the total number of buses and t is the number of buses above observed bus number T0. In our case, T is between 2061 and 6184 with 50 per cent probability.
  
  It is a correct claim, and saying that the total number of buses is double of the observed bus number is an oversimplification of that claim which we use only to point in the direction of the full Gott’s equation.

• avturchinApr 24, 2025, 10:09 AM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: NullSetOwl’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  There is a way to escape this by using the universal doomsday argument. In it, we try not to predict the exact future of the Earth, but the typical life expectancy of Earth-like civilizations, that is, the proportion of long civilizations to short ones.

  If we define a long civilization as one which has 1000 times more observers, the fact that we find ourselves early means that short civilizations are at least 1000 times more numerous.

  In short, it is SSA, but applied to a large set of civilizations.

• avturchinApr 24, 2025, 9:53 AM

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: rnollet’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  In last line there should be

  • therefore p(city has less than 2992 buses | bus has number 1546) = 0.5

• avturchinApr 24, 2025, 9:46 AM

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Ape in the coat’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  For example, If I use self-sampling to estimate the number of seconds in the year, I will get a correct answer of around several tens of millions. But using word generator will never output a word longer than 100 letters.

  I didn’t understand your idea here:

  It’s not more wrong for a person whose parents specifically tried to give birth at this date than for a person who just happened to be born at this time without any planning. And even in this extreme situation your mistake is limited by two orders of magnitude. There is no such guarantee in DA.

• avturchinApr 23, 2025, 9:28 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: rnollet’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  Gott started this type of confusion than he claimed that Berlin wall will stay 14 more years and it actually did exactly that. A better claim would be “first tens of hours with some given credence”

• avturchinApr 23, 2025, 6:26 PM

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: rnollet’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  It was discussed above in comments – see buses example. In short, I actually care about periods, and 50 per cent is for “between 15 and 30” hours and other 50 per cent is for “above 30 hours”.

• avturchinApr 23, 2025, 1:40 PM

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  Using oneself as a random sample is a very rough way to get an idea about what order of magnitude some variable is. If you determine that the day duration is 2 hours, it is still useful information as you know almost for sure now that it is not 1 millisecond or 10 years. (And if I perform 10 experiments like this, one on average will be an order of magnitude off). We can also adjust the experiment by taking into account that people are sleeping at night, so they read LW only during the day, evening, or early morning. So times above 12 or below 2 are more likely.

  You are right that the point of the experiments here is not to learn the real time of the day, but to prove that I can treat myself as a random sample in general and after that use this idea in domains where I do not have any information.

  I think the basis to treat myself as a random sample is the following:

  • I am (or better to say my properties are) randomly selected from the LW-readers population.

  • There is some bias in that selection but I assume that it is not large and I still can get the order of magnitude right even if I do not calculate the exact bias.

  • The sample size is sufficient if I want to learn the order of magnitude of some variable or if the difference between two hypotheses is sufficiently large. (If I take only one ball from a vase with 1000 balls, of which only one is green and 999 red, or from an alternative vase with 999 green and one red, I can identify the vase with high credence.)

• avturchinApr 23, 2025, 11:07 AM

  2 points

  −1

  in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  In Gotts’ approach, the bus distribution statistic between different cities is irrelevant. The number of buses N for this city is already fixed. When you draw the bus number n, you just randomly selected from N. In that case, probability is n/​N, and if we look for 0.5 probability, we get 0.5 = 1546/​N which gives us N = 2992 with 0.5 probability. Laplace came to similar result using much more complex calculations of summing all possible probability distribution.

• avturchinApr 23, 2025, 10:58 AM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: JBlack’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  Agree that in some situations I have to take into account non-randomness of my sampling. While date of birth seems random and irrelevant, the distance to equator is strongly biased by distribution of the cities with universities which on Earth are shifted North.

  Also agree that solving DA can be solution to DA: moreover, I looked at Google Scholar and found that the interest to DA is already declining.

• avturchinApr 23, 2025, 10:49 AM

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: Ape in the coat’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  Don’t agree. You chose word length generator as you know that typical length of words is 1-10. Thus not random.

  I didn’t rejected any results – it works in any test I have imagined, and I also didn’t include several experiments which have the same results, e.g the total number of the days in a year based on my birthday (got around 500) and total number of letters in english alphabet (got around 40).

  Note that alphabet letter count is not cyclical as well as my distance to equator.

  Do not understand this:

  Even if your parents specifically timed your conception to give you birth on the first of January, therefore putting you in a very specific “reference class”, you won’t be extremely mistaken about these numbers following your methodology.

  If I were born 1 of January, I would get years duration 2 days which is very wrong.

• avturchinApr 22, 2025, 6:43 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  ‘double’ follows either from Gott’s equation or from Laplace’s rule.

• avturchinApr 22, 2025, 6:26 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  I think you right that 1546 has the biggest probability compared to other probabilities for any other exact number, that is something like 1:1546. But it doesn’t means that it is likely, as it is still very small number.
  
  In Doomsday argument we are interested in comparing not exact dates but periods, as in that case we get significant probabilities for each period and comparing them has meaning.

• avturchinApr 22, 2025, 5:26 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?

  In my view, a proper use here is to compare two hypothesis: there are 2000 buses and 20 000 buses. Finding that the actual number is 1546 is an update in the direction of smaller number of buses.

Ex­per­i­men­tal test­ing: can I treat my­self as a ran­dom sam­ple?