Borasko

• BoraskoJan 1, 2022, 7:58 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: This Year I Tried To Teach My­self Math. How Did It Go?

  Thank you, that’s good to know. I’ll give it a download.

This Year I Tried To Teach My­self Math. How Did It Go?

• BoraskoNov 11, 2021, 11:45 PM

  14 points

  on: Dis­cus­sion with Eliezer Yud­kowsky on AGI interventions

  If we were to blur the name Eliezer Yudkowsky and pretended we saw this a bunch of anonymous people talking on a forum like Reddit, what would your response be to somebody who posted the things Yudkowsky posted above. What pragmatic thing could you tell that person to possibly help them? Every word can be true but It seems overwhelmingly pessimistic in a way that is not helpful, mainly due to nothing in it being actionable.

  The position of timelines being too short and the best alignment research being too weak /​ too slow, while having no avenues or ideas to make things better, with no institution to trust, to the point where we are doomed now, doesn’t lead to a lot of wanting to do anything, which is a guaranteed failure. What should I tell this person? “You seem to be pretty confident in your prediction, what do you suppose you should do to act in accordance with these believes? Wire head yourself and wait for the world to crumble around you? Maybe at least take a break for mental health reasons and let whatever will be will be. If the world is truly doomed you have nothing to worry about anymore”.

  I can agree that timelines seem short and good quality alignment research seems rare. I think research like all things humans do follows sturgeon’s law. But the problem is aside from some research with is meant only for prestige building is you can’t tell which will turn out to be crap or not. Nor can you tell where the future will go or what the final outcome will be. We can make use of trends like this person was talking about for predicting the future but there’s always uncertainty. Maybe that’s all this post is which is a rough assessments of one’s personal long term outlook in the field, but it seems pre-mature to say the researchers mentioned in this article are doing things that probably won’t help at this point. With this much pessimism towards our future world we might as well take the low probability of their help working and shoot the moon with it, what have we got to lose in a doomed world?

  But that’s the thing, the researchers working on alignment I’m sure will continue doing it even after reading this interaction. If they give up on it we are even more screwed. They might even feel a bit more resentful now knowing what this person thinks about their work, but I don’t think it changed anything.

  Maybe I was lucky to get into the AI field within the last couple of years, where short timelines were the expected, rather than something to be feared. I didn’t have the hope of long timelines and now I don’t have to feel crushed by them disappearing (forgive me if I assume too much). We have the time we have to do the best we can, if things take longer, more power too us to get better odds of a good outcome.

  Summary: While interesting, this conversation mainly updated me only to the views of the writers, not changing anything pragmatically about my view of research or timelines.

  If you think I completely misread the article, and that EY is saying something different than what I interpreted, please let me know.

• BoraskoSep 28, 2021, 6:58 PM

  1 point

  on: Bo­rasko’s Shortform

  I noticed every since I started reading math textbooks I like written communication a lot more than verbal communication. Written communication is faster to process and usually is direct with what it is trying to get across, rather than verbal communication which is usually loaded with ambiguity and non verbals. If its important I mostly prefer it in writing now. Of course the communicator does help a lot in both regards to understanding what the important part being communicated is.

  This leads me to be less interested in meetings at work, as communication usually needs to clarified multiple times verbally but I think would usually be easily squared away had the words been written.

• BoraskoSep 28, 2021, 6:51 PM

  5 points

  on: The In­tense World The­ory of Autism

  I’m not a neuroscientist but I think a nice corollary to your theory would be to look into the minds of those with addictions. I’ve read a lot about addictions online and talked to a few addicts who are addicted to different things (Alcohol, narcotics, etc). They all seem to have induced a dim world within themselves, but a specific one that is usually only acted out upon with their drug of choice, rather than like a psychopathic child killing animals. But late stage addicts do routinely do socially harmful behavior. All addicts seem to have a similar ratchet effect take place where they get their high, the high becomes their baseline, the rest of the world goes dim or less stimulating by default and to get a new high they have to go to a more potent drug /​ stimulating resource.

  I also noticed they usually seem to hide their warped utility function from themselves, only addressing it when it takes over their entire life (rock bottom). Which I think might be an interesting way to look at alignment problems because addicts are basically misaligned mesa-optimized humans that has their “inner process” hiding their warped true reward function from themselves. From the point of view of addiction recovery it’s also interesting to see how a misaligned person tries to change their values to something that produces better long term outcomes for that person, to varying degrees of success.

  I don’t know if looking into addictions would be something your interested in, but I figured it was worth bringing up when I read your dim world theory.

• BoraskoSep 6, 2021, 10:46 PM

  1 point

  on: Bo­rasko’s Shortform

  I am currently struggling my way through Probability and Statistics by DeGroot. I was reading it because it seemed to be the best introductory textbook I can find for probability and yet it still seems like there could be better ways to show the material sometimes. I’ve learned a good bit from it but I am feeling worried about gaining and retaining useful knowledge.

  My current worries are about trade-offs. I do a few of the exercises at the end of the chapter, some I get right some I get wrong. For those I get wrong I usually try to see what I messed up, some equations seemed convoluted enough I’m not sure where to start to get to the correct answer.

  So I get some right and I get some wrong. Am I able to move on to the next chapter now? What internal confidence /​ skill level should I have to where I can move on to the next chapter without worrying I might not know enough, while also not doing every single problem in the book. I know I will use probability for almost everything I do once I start making Machine Learning models, can I use that knowledge that I will be reinforcing these concepts in the future to accept a lower confidence level in my skill now? At the cost of off-loading that extra development into the future? Will I even need it as much as I thought in the future?

  I don’t have a perfect mind either, no matter what level of competency my skills will decay over time unless reinforced through continuous practice, which I think will happen early-mid next year since that is when I plan to start going back into machine learning model creation. I assume more competency will decay slower /​ need less to time to get back to initial level. But any extra time put into building competency now leaves less time for building competency in programming.

  So I am frustrated trying to find the balance between obtaining better confidence in skill vs time spent to obtain that confidence. If anybody else on LessWrong has self studied math books I would love your answer to this problem. I will continue to think about it as well, but it has been a nagging me for a while.

Rage Against The MOOChine

• BoraskoJul 7, 2021, 2:48 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: Daniel Kokotajlo’s comment on: Daniel Koko­ta­jlo’s Shortform

  I’ve stopped bringing up the awkward truths around my current friends. I started to feel like I was using to much of my built up esoteric social capital on things they were not going to accept (or at least want to accept). How can I blame them? If somebody else told me there was some random field that a select few of people interested in will be deciding the fate of all of humanity for the rest of time and I had no interest in that field I would want to be skeptical of it as well. Especially if they were to through out some figures like 15 − 25 years from now (my current timelines) is when humanities rein over the earth will end because of this field.

  I found when I stopped bringing it up conversations were lighter and more fun. I’ve accepted we will just be screwing around talking about personal issues and the issues de jour, I don’t mind it. The truth is a bitter pill to get down, and if they no interest in helping AI research its probably best they don’t live their life worrying about things they won’t be able to change. So for me at least I saw personal life improvements on not bringing some of those awkward truths up.

• BoraskoJun 27, 2021, 2:28 AM

  5 points

  on: Bo­rasko’s Shortform

  

  Sometimes it really does suck to not know what you don’t know. Having no college math education I didn’t know what I needed to know to be on par with what math undergraduates know. The further I make it into my self selected MOOC courses meant to stand in for a C.S degree the more I realize where I am lacking and what I need to do to fix it. If I really want to put my money where my mouth is and do research I’m gonna need to go pretty deep into math I’ve been avoiding.

  Coding MOOC’s try to do their best to offer their courses to anyone, even the people with little to no experience in math, hence Andrew Ng in his ML class brushing over all the math in that course. I appreciate it as somebody who doesn’t know math at that level and still wants to learn ML pragmatically, but the brutal truth is without rigorous understanding I will only be able to use research. Not contribute to research which is my goal. So I almost feel like I am starting at square one again staring at the mountain of what I need to know ahead of me. Wishing I started sooner but trying to not be hard on myself, while mentally shifting my timelines and trying to find the best math resources. I found some good ones though.

  I know it’s better to figure out I’m doing something wrong and correct it, but man I wish studying was quicker and easier. Oh well, I was planning on doing this the rest of my life anyway, what’s a little added time to make sure I get it right?

• BoraskoJun 21, 2021, 3:51 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: norswap’s comment on: Chang­ing my life in 2021, halfway through

  I completely agree with the problems of making big changes at once. But six months is a long time, I thought if I try to implement one new skill or life improvement a month, then by a year that’s twelve new things that are better for me. A month is a long enough time for things to sink in without getting overwhelming, and then can be easily continued with a routine in the next month when adding another thing.

  I’ll be totally honest and say I don’t always know what to add or I am too lazy to do it even during an entire month, but it’s best not to be hard on yourself.

  One of thing I think is super important is that personal slips in self improve routine happens. binging social media, missing a workout, having a lot of cake on a diet, etc. The most important thing is to be update-less about your failure. Stay up too late? Set an alarm for mostly regular time and live with the consequences. Do everything you ideally would do that day with you hadn’t broken your own rules. Not allowing myself to death spiral over bad decisions and force myself to continue like nothing happened is what I think helped me cement good practices the most.

  tl;dr: Don’t be too hard on yourself for failure, keep trying.

• BoraskoJun 10, 2021, 11:52 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: Saran’s comment on: Chang­ing my life in 2021, halfway through

  I have not, but I’ll look into it. I hope it goes well for you!

Chang­ing my life in 2021, halfway through

• BoraskoJun 8, 2021, 11:11 PM

  3 points

  on: Big pic­ture of pha­sic dopamine

  Very interesting! I don’t know much about the brain but I think this post did a good job of explaining the concept and showing it’s importance. I wonder how the brain does this with neuroplasticity. I’ve read this article from MIT about researchers rewiring eye inputs to the audio processing parts of the brain. Would the hypothalamus have that hyper-prior on what eye data “looks like” and create loops and systems that could de-code that data and reintegrate it with the undamaged processing systems? Could an AI system just as easily create or re-use existing substructures within it’s code? I’m too new to ML learning to know if models can add layers during deployment, or how generalizability could be made within neuro networks past training.

• BoraskoMay 11, 2021, 5:58 PM

  1 point

  on: Is driv­ing worth the risk?

  I don’t want to die, but I also want to live. The future is inherently uncertain, so if I were to take a decreased quality of life (no more driving) to better my chances of surviving to ASI, I had better have strong intuition that ASI would come.

  I’m short on AI timelines (2035 median, right tailed distribution), but I also drive and take more risky activities on covid because I like being in person with my friends and family. The fact that I don’t know what a post singularity world would look like helps me feel comfortable taking these risks, it seems almost anything can happen post singularity good (hopefully) and weird.

  My main worry about decreasing my quality of life by not driving /​ decreasing risk is the alignment problem for AI. I can image a counterfactual world where AI is created but it is not aligned, where if I were to take heavy precautions I would suffer decreased quality of life many years just to die to a rouge agent.

  If I am to take this serious and hyperbolic discount my life I would need to be more assured AI is align-able, and I am too new on my journey into AI to feel comfortable talking about that yet. It may seem myopic to take these risks considering the odds, but everything is uncertain, and I could always die one day before ASI anyway.

  I live in a more rural place however, if you live in a big city where walking everywhere is feasible, your calculations for quality of life change.

• BoraskoApr 30, 2021, 8:06 PM

  10 points

  on: AMA: Paul Chris­ti­ano, al­ign­ment researcher

  If you believe AGI will be created. What would be the median year you think it will be created at?

  Ex. −2046, 2074, etc.

• BoraskoApr 27, 2021, 6:06 PM

  5 points

  0

  on: Bo­rasko’s Shortform

  I think I am approaching the end game of video gaming.

  I can scroll through Steam and GoG for hours while seeing nothing that slightly interests me. Every once and a while a great game comes and revolutionizes my experience with video games, but like riding a roller coaster its then hard to go back to the Farris wheel after and feel a rush, all games after are discounted on their novelty. The games that did that for me were the Pathologic “series” and Disco Elysium. Yesterday was a bit different, I went on a site called Legendsworld.com and they have a lot of old /​​ almost lost media games. I spent a good couple of hours browsing very old games, downloading them and then trying to get them to work. Most were broken and corrupt. But it was fun.

  It wasn’t the act of playing the games themselves, most were clunky and hardly working even if they did run, it was mostly finding the hidden games that was fun. I was playing a meta game around video-games. But in all reality it was just novelty seeking behavior, which kind of worries me.

  I want to enjoy games and get involved in their stories, like books and movies they are a great medium to explore. Meta gaming ruins that by making it a dopamine seeking outlet only.

  I don’t know how to solve this, I am thinking of two possible causes right now.

  1. My threshold for novelty is too high, I’ve seen so many ideas and visual artistry that for something to seem interesting it really has to differentiate itself.

  2. My dopamine receptors are fried, I can’t just pick a game due to opportunity cost and I seek a greater hit of dopamine from the other options I have.

  This does sadly extend past video games, I’m picky with books, movies, art and videos I consume. It’s useful somewhat for avoiding Sturgeons Law but it has it’s cost of making me become stuck in ruts sometimes. I think that somewhat ironically having heavy novelty seeking behavior is reducing my opportunity to experience novel things.

  I’m putting this here as a “To Do” for my own thinking, hopefully solving this would help me experience better quality of life.

• BoraskoApr 10, 2021, 4:56 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: Dustin’s comment on: Con­vict Con­di­tion­ing Book Review

  It’s brushed over in the book but he believes weights put unnatural stress on the body causing it to deteriorate quicker. Little evidence other than his anecdotal experiences is given for this. It is mostly the assert and move on.

Con­vict Con­di­tion­ing Book Review

• BoraskoApr 9, 2021, 9:21 PM

  8 points

  on: Covid 4/​9: Another Vac­cine Pass­port Objection

  I work at my county’s health department helping with the vaccination process and I can confirm that you are scheduled for two weeks out exactly when your first shot is done. If you miss that date or have to reschedule you are put on a waiting list for a different date in time, I don’t have access to the list, but I also assume it’s scheduled for you again with the hopes things will just work out.

  I take inbound calls sometimes and many people are worried if they cancel they won’t ever get, or since it’s been longer than 2 weeks “something” would happen where they wouldn’t get full immunity. If you’ve been reading these posts for a while I don’t think it should be surprising that lay people take the knowledge they are given on the covid issue without question. I think for most cases that’s reasonable and tends to work well.

  Our department is greatly over worked as well. when we register people in our system we try to put their preferred contact information as email since that is sent out automatically when that person is in the available age /​ priority group. If they sent their preferred method as call they might not ever get a call telling them they can schedule for appointments since we have very few staff (I haven’t met any) who do outbound calls or have the time to do them. This has a major impact in our elderly community as they usually can’t figure out technology as well as younger people, and the vaccination registration slots will be filled by the people that can work computers.

  I have had many times older people call our vaccination line and wonder why they haven’t been called to be scheduled after signing up so long ago, only to see they have been sent an email months ago but nobody could call them to tell them to register. When I was working at the vaccine clinic earlier today one guy wondered in, said he never got a confirmation time since nobody called but it had been two weeks since his first dose, sure enough he was scheduled for today and we got him his second dose.

  I’m not high enough to know any more logistics or bottleneck issues other than that, but like most massive projects it’s chaotic, with information changing rapidly, and little optimizations and setbacks happening all the time. To leave this post on a hopeful note, if they show up to our clinic and are in an eligible group, if we have shots left to give we get them registered and get them the shot that day. We also push through the spouses of the people there getting vaccinated as well. Most other vaccine workers like me try to push through as many people as we can as painlessly as possible, fighting the grinding wheels of bureaucracy as much as we can. We understand we are here to vaccinate, not pencil push, little formalities are easily overlooked. I hope it’s the same for clinics in other parts of the state’s as well.

• BoraskoApr 2, 2021, 2:39 PM

  1 point

  on: Covid 4/​1: Vac­cine Passports

  As far as QR code privacy goes, anybody that has their location checked on in their phone is getting tracked much more than that code could ever do. Although I’m sure they wouldn’t mind having the ‘vaccinated/​non-vacinated’ categories. If being vaccinated wasn’t already inferable by reading the persons emails /​ listening to their phone calls.

  I really like the idea of privacy. But I just assume after Snowden’s leaks everybody is being maximally tracked ²⁴⁄₇. I’m not saying its right, but I have no power to stop it. So when I hear of people’s privacy concern issues about being tracked the best I can do is be sympathetically supportive, but I believe it’s a lost cause and thus usually pre-factor it in to government proposals.