many theoretical computer scientists think our conjecture is false
Does that mean that you (plural) are either members of a theoretical computer science community or have discussed the conjecture with people that are? (I have no idea who you are or what connections you may or may not have with academia in general.)
Looking good to his superiors is the one thing the Pointy-Haired Boss is actually good at. Several strips show that some of his ridiculous-seeming decisions make perfect sense from that perspective.
<irony>Robustly generalizible like noticing that bacteria aren’t growing next to a certain kind of mold that contaminated your petri dish or that photographic film is getting fogged when there’s no obvious source of light?</irony>
Elaborating on The Very General Helper Strategy: the first thing you do when planning a route by hand is find some reasonably up-to-date maps.
One thing that almost always tends to robustly generalize is improving the tools that people use to gather information and make measurements. And this also tends to snowball in unexpected ways—would anyone have guessed beforehand that the most important invention in the history of medicine would turn out to be a better magnifying glass? (And tools can include mathematical techniques, too—being able to run statistical analysis on a computer lets you find a lot of patterns you wouldn’t be able to find if it was 1920 and you had to do it all by hand.)
With regards to AI, that might mean interpretability research?
Hmmm. Taking this literally, if I didn’t know where I was going, one thing I might do is look up hotel chains and find out which ones suit my needs with respect to price level and features and which don’t, so when I know what city I want to travel to, I can then find out if my top choices of hotel chain have a hotel in a convenient location there.
Meta-strategy: try to find things that are both relevant to what you want and mostly independent of the things you don’t know about?
For some reason, this story generated a sense of dread in me—I kept waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop.
Well, you could start by looking at the cosmetic differences achieved by dog breeders as a lower limit to what it is possible to acheive by tinkering with a genome...
Straight-up diminishing marginal utility of wealth, then?
Well, that’s the Bay Area for you—ground zero for both computer-related things and the hippie movement.
The answer to your specific question about the Fermi Paradox is that, after an AI destroys its creators, the AI itself would presumably still be there to do whatever it wanted, which could include plans for the rest of the universe outside its solar system. So “AI that kills its creators” still leaves us with the question of why we haven’t seen any AIs spreading through our galaxy either.
I live in New Jersey and have no job and lots of free time. How can I do this for someone without moving to the Bay Area?
Human capital is worth nothing after you die, though.
Does the answer to “should I buy insurance” change if the interest rate that you earn on your wealth is zero or even negative?
Although I don’t quite fit the broader diagnosis, the phrase “demand avoidance” does describe how I’ve been at my low points—what I wanted most at those times in my life was to be free from obligations in general, such as the obligation to go to school, the obligation to get out of bed, the obligation to eat food, etc. - for there to be absolutely nothing that I would “have to” do if I preferred not to do it. Unfortunately, taking that impulse—to be free to do absolutely nothing, without anyone or anything influencing me otherwise—to its logical extreme would mean being dead, because, given physics, nonexistence is the only state in which that condition actually holds.
I did have an “internship” right after college for a few months and was completely miserable during it. The other problem was that one thing I valued highly was free time, and regardless of how much money and status a 40 hour a week job gives you, that’s still 40 hours a week in which your time isn’t free! There are very few jobs in which, like an Uber driver, you have absolute freedom to choose when and how much to work and the only consequence of not working for a period of time is that you don’t get paid—you can’t “lose your job” for choosing not to show up. Unfortunately, most jobs that fit that description, such as Uber driver or fiction novel writer, usually pay very poorly.
Yet another problem is that I feel like applying for jobs will be futile. Spending time submitting resumes into a metaphorical black hole and never getting any interviews or even a form letter in response, even from grocery stores, has left me in despair and even starting to think about job hunting consistently and reliably makes me start to feel incredibly depressed.
Quite possibly. I did get an ADHD diagnosis as a kid...
Yeah, except that sometimes I’m weirdly insensitive to punishments and other threats. For some reason, my brain often (mistakenly?) concludes that doing the thing that would let me avoid the punishment is impossible, and I just shut down completely instead of trying to comply.
As I once wrote before:
Guy with a gun: I’m going to shoot you if you haven’t changed the sheets on your bed by tomorrow.
Me: AAH I’M GOING TO DIE IT’S NO GOOD I MIGHT AS WELL SPEND THE DAY LYING IN BED PLAYING VIDEO GAMES BECAUSE I’M GOING TO GET SHOT TOMORROW SOMEONE CALL THE FUNERAL HOME AND MAKE PLANS TELL MY FAMILY I LOVE THEM
Guy with a gun: You know, you could always just… change the sheets?
ME: THE THOUGHT HAS OCCURRED TO ME BUT I’M TOO UPSET RIGHT NOW ABOUT THE FACT THAT I’M GOING TO DIE TOMORROW BECAUSE THE SHEETS WEREN’T CHANGED TO ACTUALLY GO AND CHANGE THEM
Also, the “worse consequences” were often projected to happen years in the future: you need good grades to get into a good college and then get a good job, etc. The fear of being homeless years in the future when your money runs out isn’t really all that great when the “good” future you can imagine for yourself doesn’t seem very appealing either—the idea of having a full-time job horrified ten-year-old me for various reasons, and I never really managed to get over that, to the point where I never did manage to get and keep a “real” job after college. There were years I lived with the constant worry that my parents might one day decide to stop supporting me financially and kick me out of their house...
Pets often make their needs quite obvious if you “forget” to take care of them. When my dog wants something from me, he won’t leave me alone until I figure out what it is.
They can also be immediately rewarding and stay that way. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend a goldfish, but if you’re already an animal lover it’s hard to become bored with a dog or cat.
Yes. These people are often called “disabled”, “retired”, or “children”. For example, a person with severe Alzheimer’s disease or schizophrenia is unlikely to be able to produce much of anything at all. Most people, if they live long enough, will eventually suffer enough damage from aging that they semi-voluntarily remove themselves from the labor force. Similarly, your average two-year-old probably isn’t going to be productively employable either, regardless of the wage, because it would cost more to supervise them than they would be able to produce. However, most people who are of prime working age and unemployed are not, in fact, disabled to the point where even in an ideal world there would be nobody that would want to pay them to do something.