joseph_c

Karma: 147

joseph_c Mar 26, 2023, 10:00 PM
0 points
in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: adamzerner’s Shortform
I think it really depends on your reading speed. If you can read at 500 wpm, then it’s probably faster for you to just read the book than search around for a podcast and then listen to said podcast. I do agree, though, that reading a summary or a blog about the topic is often a good replacement for reading an entire book.

joseph_c Mar 21, 2023, 4:18 PM
2 points
2
on: Are robotics bottlenecked on hardware or software?
I think robotics was (and still is) mostly bottlenecked on the algorithms side of things. It’s not too expensive to build a robot, and the software is good enough that a hobbyist could hack something together easily enough in a day or two. The issue is that it’s really hard to make a robot do what you want it to do. Even if you have a robot that can stand up, run around, and do back flips, how do you make it go rescue people from burning buildings? Most of the tasks robots could be useful for are messy, complicated things, and robots don’t yet know how to do that.
Modern machine learning is solving this problem, but still not all the way there. I think one promising area of research is using large language models to plan out actions and this will be the way of the future.

joseph_c Mar 21, 2023, 4:06 PM
2 points
0
in reply to: DirectedEvolution’s comment on: LED Brain Stimulation for Productivity

joseph_c Mar 21, 2023, 2:15 AM
1 point
0
on: LED Brain Stimulation for Productivity

joseph_c Jan 31, 2023, 11:15 PM
3 points
0
on: 2022 Unofficial LessWrong General Census
I noticed that you listed “Salamander” as rationalist/rationalist adjacent fiction. I’ve never heard of it before, and Google doesn’t seem to know either. What is this?

joseph_c Jan 17, 2023, 5:38 PM
2 points
1
on: Five Reasons to Lie
Lying is a social lubricant. The classic defence of lying here- if someone asks you: “Does my bum look too big in this dress?”, you don’t want to be honest and respond: “Yes, you look like a whale who has swallowed another, much larger whale.”
That’s not being honest—that’s just being mean. If you really want to present an uncharitable view of honesty, maybe at least make the statements you claim to be honest actually true? For example, the response “No, it’s your fat that does it,” is also rather unkind but has the advantage of maybe being true.

joseph_c Jan 12, 2023, 6:59 PM
1 point
0
AF
on: ChatGPT struggles to respond to the real world
Did you and your friend only communicate via text messages/email? I think that would make a better comparison to asking ChatGPT help than having your friend in the same room as you give instructions based off of what they see.

joseph_c Jan 8, 2023, 1:35 AM
1 point
0
on: Asking for a name for a symptom of rationalization
I can’t really think of a word that describes this. Maybe “dogmatic”, “fanatic”, “blind faith”, or “convicted”?

joseph_c Jan 3, 2023, 5:36 PM
3 points
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: I have thousands of copies of HPMOR in Russian. How to use them with the most impact?
You should probably also put up a sign/sticky note saying “free books” so people know they’re free :)

joseph_c Dec 24, 2022, 4:52 PM
3 points
0
on: A Decentralised Universal Basic Income
The current premise is that, by locally monitoring factors, such as the MAC and IP address a user is connected to, we can prevent others signing onto the same device. Essentially, one account may be accessed via multiple devices, however, only one account may be accessed per device. In theory, this should minimise the incentive to create multiple accounts, as there is presently no explicit way to circumvent the issue.
Why can’t someone spoof their MAC/IP address? Or even easier, buy two devices?

joseph_c Dec 24, 2022, 9:17 AM
1 point
0
in reply to: dkirmani’s comment on: What to do with 500 ML engineers
Could you please elaborate? Why is it bad to publicly specify these things?

joseph_c Dec 17, 2022, 7:51 PM
1 point
0
on: What about non-degree seeking?
Is there a reason you want to take classes instead of self-study? If you’re interested in self-studying, MIT OpenCourseWare has a lot of useful classes. I’d also check out https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~10715-f18/.

joseph_c Dec 16, 2022, 11:42 PM
1 point
0
on: College Selection Advice for Technical Alignment
Hi! I’m a current MIT student. Here’s how it works at MIT. Feel free to reply back for more information:
MIT is great in terms of classes. Getting out of prereqs is pretty easy. You just talk to the professor and get permission to take their class. I’ve done this in two classes so far (this is just my first semester here!) and they approved me without a problem. I also took many concurrent enrollment classes in high school at a local university and the process was much the same. My experience has been that professors are very willing to let ambitious students take their classes, even if they’re uncertain about those students’ abilities to succeed (though they may caution against it). You’ll probably see the same at whatever university you choose to attend.
On the other hand, fulfilling general institute requirements (the general education classes at MIT) is a pain here at MIT. MIT offers advanced standing exams (ASEs) to get out of some of these, but they’re only the most introductory classes. There is only one computer science ASE, for example, and it’s basically a test of “Have you seen Python before?” If you’re goal isn’t to graduate, this isn’t really much of a problem. If you do hope to graduate, on the other hand, it’s a hard to get out of classes for which you know the material.
In terms of Alignment clubs here at MIT: I haven’t been, but I’ve heard there is an MIT/Harvard Alignment club. There’s also a branch of EA out here, and I’ve attended one meeting. I do think it’s much bigger on the west coast though.
Overall, MIT is a great place, especially for people wanting to go into math/CS. I think you’d enjoy MIT a lot, and I definitely recommend at least applying. MIT’s application is really easy—I did it all in one day (the due date for Early Action)--and rather different from other colleges’. For example, MIT doesn’t have any essays (there’s just lots of short answers), and many of their prompts are optional. I think you would be a great fit for MIT, and I’d be excited to see you come!

joseph_c Dec 11, 2022, 8:49 AM
−10 points
−4
on: Reflecting on the 2022 Guild of the Rose Workshops
I think that if you are going to aggressively advertise your company/guild/cult by posting over 25 links to your company website, you should at least be up front that the product you’re selling isn’t free. For this reason, I’ve strongly downvoted this post.

joseph_c Dec 1, 2022, 4:36 AM
1 point
0
in reply to: Adam Jermyn’s comment on: Multi-Component Learning and S-Curves
Sorry, I meant $⟨ a, a ⟩ \cdot ⟨ b, b ⟩$ . And yes, that should eliminate the term that causes the incorrect initialization to decay. Doesn’t that cause the learning to be in the correct direction from the start?

joseph_c Nov 30, 2022, 4:27 AM
1 point
0
on: Multi-Component Learning and S-Curves
Have you experimented with subtracting $a^{T} a \cdot b^{T} b$ from the loss? It seems to me that doing so would get rid of the second term and allow the model to learn the correct vectors from the beginning.

joseph_c Nov 28, 2022, 1:58 AM
1 point
in reply to: niplav’s comment on: niplav’s Shortform
I thought masters’ theses were supposed to be about new research (and maybe bachelor theses too?). Is this not the case?

joseph_c Nov 18, 2022, 3:57 PM
0 points
0
on: My Deontology Says Narrow-Mindedness is Always Wrong
Is this serious? I find it somewhat ironic that your deontology is completely closed-minded on its belief about narrow-mindedness.

joseph_c Nov 15, 2022, 5:06 PM
2 points
1
on: “You could make a religion out of this!”
Fact check: Mormons don’t go on missionaries until they are at least 18 for men and 19 for women.
Missionaries can be single men between the ages of 18 and 25, single women over the age of 19 or retired couples. Missionaries work with a companion of the same gender during their mission, with the exception of couples, who work with their spouse. Single men serve missions for two years and single women serve missions for 18 months.
See https://news-pg.churchofjesuschrist.org/topic/missionary-program.
Also, ever since the most recent transfer of power, Mormons have decided they want to be called “members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” instead of “Mormons”.
When referring to Church members, the terms “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” “Latter-day Saints,” “members of the Church of Jesus Christ” and “members of the restored Church of Jesus Christ” are preferred. We ask that the term “Mormons” and “LDS” not be used.
See https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/style-guide.
Also, could I seriously advise not mimicking the Mormon missionary program? Mormon missionaries are basically cut off from everyone and everything except the Mormon church. Until about three years ago, they weren’t even allowed to call home more than twice a year. Apparently it’s also so stressful that about half of them return home early, where they’re further shamed for not meeting the exacting expectations of their church. It’s basically human trafficking in the name of religion. You can read all kinds of mission horror stories on (the admittedly terribly biased) https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon.

joseph_c Nov 14, 2022, 4:55 PM
2 points
1
on: I (with the help of a few more people) am planning to create an introduction to AI Safety that a smart teenager can understand. What am I missing?
Your outline has a lot of beliefs you expect your students to walk away with, but basically zero skills. If I was one of your prospective students, this would look a lot more like cult indoctrination than a genuine course where I would learn something.
What skills do you hope your students walk away with? Do you hope that they’ll know how to avoid overfitting models? That they’ll know how to detect trojaned networks? That they’ll be able to find circuits in large language models? I’d recommend figuring this out first, and then working backwards to figure out what to teach.
Also, don’t underestimate just how smart smart 15- and 16-year-olds can be. At my high school, for example, there were at least a dozen students who knew calculus at this age, and many more who knew how to program. And this was just a relatively normal public high school.