DirectedEvolution

Karma: 11,228

Pandemic Prediction Checklist: H5N1

Pandemic Prediction Checklist: Monkeypox

Correlation may imply some sort of causal link.

For guessing its direction, simple models help you think.

Controlled experiments, if they are well beyond the brink

Of .05 significance will make your unknowns shrink.

Replications show there’s something new under the sun.

Did one cause the other? Did the other cause the one?

Are they both controlled by what has already begun?

Or was it their coincidence that caused it to be done?

DirectedEvolution Apr 17, 2025, 3:39 PM
2 points
0
in reply to: eggsyntax’s comment on: GPT-4.1 Is a Mini Upgrade
Gemini seems to do a better job of shortening text while maintaining the nuance I expect grant reviewers to demand. Claude seems to focus entirely on shortening text. For context, I’m feeding a specific aims page for my PhD work that I’ve written about 15 drafts of already, so I have detailed implicit preferences about what is and is not an acceptable result.

DirectedEvolution Apr 17, 2025, 8:53 AM
2 points
0
on: GPT-4.1 Is a Mini Upgrade
I gotta say, I have no idea why people are putting Claude 3.7 in the same league as recent GPT models or Gemini 2.5. My experience is that Claude 3.7 deeply struggles with a range of tasks. I’ve been trying to use it for grant writing—shortening text, defining terms in my field, suggesting alternative ways to word things. It gets definitions wrong, offers nonsensical alternative wordings, and gets stuck repeating the same “shortened,” nuance-stripped text over and over despite me asking it to try another way.
By contrast, I threw an entire draft of my grant proposal into Gemini 2.5 and got a substantially shorter and more clear new version out, first try.

DirectedEvolution Apr 7, 2025, 7:07 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: mattmacdermott’s comment on: mattmacdermott’s Shortform
One way to think about this might be to cast it in the language of conditional probability. Perhaps we are modeling our agent as it makes choices between two world states, A and B, based on their predicted levels of X and Y. If P(A) is the probability that the agent chooses state A, and P(A|X) and P(A|Y) are the probabilities of choosing A given knowledge of predictions about the level of X and Y respectively in state A vs. state B, then it seems obvious to me that “cares about X only because it leads to Y” can be expressed as P(A|XY) = P(A|Y). Once we know its predictions about Y, X tells us nothing more about its likelihood of choosing state A. Likewise, “cares about Y only because it leads to X” could be expressed as P(A|XY) = P(A|X). In the statement “the agent cares about X only because it leads to Y, and it cares about Y only because it leads to X,” it seems like it’s saying that P(A|XY) = P(A|Y) ∧ P(A|XY) = P(A|X), which implies that P(A|Y) = P(A|X) -- there is perfect mutual information shared between X and Y about P(A).
However, I don’t think that this quite captures the spirit of the question, since the idea that the agent “cares about X and Y” isn’t the same thing as X and Y being predictive of which state the agent will choose. It seems like what’s wanted is a formal way to say “the only things that ‘matter’ in this world are X and Y,” which is not the same thing as saying “X and Y are the only dimensions on which world states are mapped.” We could imagine a function that takes the level of X and Y in two world states, A and B, and returns a preference order {A > B, B > A, A = B, incomparable}. But who’s to say this function isn’t just capturing an empirical regularity, rather than expressing some fundamental truth about why X and Y control the agent’s preference for A or B? However, I think that’s an issue even in the absence of any sort of circular reasoning.
A machine learning model’s training process is effectively just a way to generate a function that consistently maps an input vector to an output that’s close to a zero output from the loss function. The model doesn’t “really” value reward or avoidance of loss any more than our brains “really” value dopamine, and as far as I know, nobody has a mathematical definition of what it means to “really” value something, as opposed to behaving in a way that consistently tends to optimize for a target. From that point of view, maybe saying that P(A|Y) = P(A) really is the best we can do to mathematically express “he only cares about Y” and P(A|X) = P(A|Y) is the best way to express “he only cares about Y to get X and only cares about X to get Y.”

DirectedEvolution Apr 6, 2025, 8:52 PM
8 points
−1
in reply to: MondSemmel’s comment on: Why Have Sentence Lengths Decreased?
That’s a valid reaction. However, my take is that removal of the quotes is aesthetically useful precisely because it complicates our ability to parse the words as dialog and muddles that sort of naive clarity. Spoken words are sounds, sounds are part of the environment, and it is both a choice and an effort to parse those sounds as dialog.
Most authors opt to do this work for the reader through punctuation, which also enforces interpreting these passages as dialog first and sounds second, if at all. McCarthy makes it easier to interpret spoken words as sounds that are part of the environment. If your aim as a reader is to parse dialog, it will be harder to do this in a McCarthy novel. If your aim is instead to have an aesthetic experience of spoken words as sensation interlaced with other impressions of the environment, then McCarthy’s method of punctuation makes this simpler (and even plants the suggestion that this might be something you as a reader might want to do, if you hadn’t considered the possibility before).

DirectedEvolution Apr 6, 2025, 7:35 PM
20 points
5
in reply to: MondSemmel’s comment on: Why Have Sentence Lengths Decreased?
I respectfully disagree. As with the minor edit on the Boccaccio quote in another of my comments here, eliminating quotes fundamentally changes the way we interpret the scene.
With quotes (and especially with the way dialog is typically paragraphed), human speech is implicitly shown to be so drastically separate from the sensory component of the scene that it requires completely different formatting from the rest of the text.
By eliminating quotes and dialog paragraphing, human speech becomes just another element in the scene being depicted, not separate or any more or less important than the action of screwing down the plastic cap or the functional importance of the oil in the lamp.
The absence of quotes only makes it harder to read if you, the reader, resist this aesthetic and try to force the dialog to be of greater importance than McCarthy is allowing it to be in his novel.
He screwed down the plastic cap and wiped the bottle off with a rag and hefted it in his hand. Oil for their little slutlamp to light the long gray dusks, the long gray dawns.
“You can read me a story,” the boy said. “Cant you, Papa?”
“Yes,” he said. “I can.”
See how the social interaction between Papa and the boy is now positioned as separate from and more important than Papa’s work on the lamp?
He screwed down the plastic cap and wiped the bottle off with a rag and hefted it in his hand. Oil for their little slutlamp to light the long gray dusks, the long gray dawns. “You can read me a story,” the boy said. “Cant you, Papa?” “Yes,” he said. “I can.”
Even if you just add quotation marks, the marks call special and separate attention to the dialog, placing it as a separate component of the paragraph.

DirectedEvolution Apr 5, 2025, 7:36 PM
2 points
−3
in reply to: MondSemmel’s comment on: Why Have Sentence Lengths Decreased?
Semicolons are unnecessary? That doesn’t go far enough. Cormac McCarthy got rid of quotation marks, most commas, and almost exterminated the colon.

DirectedEvolution Apr 4, 2025, 1:38 AM
26 points
1
on: Why Have Sentence Lengths Decreased?
Interestingly, breaking up long sentences into shorter ones by replacing a transitional word with a period does not quite capture the same nuance as the original. Here’s a translation of Boccaccio, and a version where I add a period in the middle.
Wherefore, as it falls to me to lead the way in this your enterprise of storytelling, I intend to begin with one of His wondrous works, that, by hearing thereof, our hopes in Him, in whom is no change, may be established, and His name be by us forever lauded.
Wherefore, as it falls to me to lead the way in this your enterprise of storytelling, I intend to begin with one of His wondrous works. By hearing thereof, our hopes in Him, in whom is no change, may be established, and His name be by us forever lauded.
By replacing ”, that,” with a period, my revision completely changes our relationship with the narrator. In the original translation, the narrator is both announcing his goal and describing what he plans to do to achieve it.
In the revised version, he’s describing his plan of action and a potential effect of that plan. We might assume that he’s choosing that plan in order to bring about that effect, but it’s no longer explicit in the text. Each sentence stands on its own. It’s up to the reader to perceive the narrator’s intention.
I wonder if inserting periods systematically tends to disrupt explicit links between intention and action. If so, perhaps the shortening of sentences reflects the anomie of the modern era, the gradual decay of an explicit moral framework in the stories we tell.

DirectedEvolution Apr 4, 2025, 12:49 AM
8 points
2
on: Why Have Sentence Lengths Decreased?
Many short sentences can add up to a very long text. The cost of paper, ink, typesetting and distribution would incentivize using fewer letters, but not shorter sentences.

DirectedEvolution Mar 21, 2025, 6:01 AM
16 points
15
in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: johnswentworth’s Shortform
“I’m skeptical of this one because female partners are typically notoriously high maintenance in money, attention, and emotional labor.”

Some people enjoy attending to their partner and find meaning in emotional labor. Housing’s a lot more expensive than gifts and dates. My partner and I go ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ on expenses and chores. Some people like having long-term relationships with emotional depth. You might want to try exploring out of your bubble, especially if you life in SF, and see what some normal people (ie non-rationalists) in long term relationships have to say about it.

DirectedEvolution Mar 19, 2025, 6:21 PM
8 points
2
on: OpenAI #11: America Action Plan
I cancelled my OpenAI subscription due to this article and I let them know that’s the reason why in their cancellation survey.

DirectedEvolution Mar 18, 2025, 7:07 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: Gurkenglas’s comment on: Metacognition Broke My Nail-Biting Habit
Unfortunately the level of physical restraint I’d need to stop biting is too costly to be worth it to me.

DirectedEvolution Mar 17, 2025, 3:18 PM
2 points
0
in reply to: Gurkenglas’s comment on: Metacognition Broke My Nail-Biting Habit
It actually did contain capsaicin IIRC. Sort of a bitter spicy mix. The other issue is it gets on things you touch, including food if you’re preparing or eating it by hand.

DirectedEvolution Mar 17, 2025, 3:16 PM
2 points
0
in reply to: Gurkenglas’s comment on: Metacognition Broke My Nail-Biting Habit
I’ve tried that, but it’s not enough to stop me. Makes my mouth taste disgusting for no benefit.

DirectedEvolution Mar 10, 2025, 5:38 AM
5 points
0
in reply to: ozziegooen’s comment on: Marcello’s Shortform
They are

DirectedEvolution Mar 2, 2025, 5:07 PM
17 points
0
in reply to: Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel’s comment on: Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel’s Shortform
My partner has ADHD. She and I talk about it often because I don’t, and understanding and coordinating with each other takes a lot of work.

Her environment is a strong influence on what tasks she considers and chooses. If she notices a weed in the garden walking from the car to the front door, she can get caught up for hours weeding before she makes it into the house. If she’s in her home office trying to work from home and notices something to tidy, same thing.

All the tasks her environment suggests to her seem important and urgent, because she’s not comparing them to some larger list of potential priorities that apply to different contexts—she’s always working on the top priority strictly with reference to the context she’s in at the moment.
She is much better than me at accomplishing tasks that her environment naturally suggests to her—cooking (inspired by recipes she finds on social media), cleaning, shopping, gardening, socializing, and making social plans in response to texts and notifications on her phone.
I am much better than her at constructing an organized list of global priorities and working through them systematically. However, I find it very difficult to be opportunistic, and I can be inflexible and distracted from the moment because I’m always thinking of the one main task I want to focus on.
I don’t think explore/exploit is quite the right frame in our relationship. I’m much more capable of “exploring” topics that require understanding complex abstract interconnections because I can force myself to keep coming back to them over and over again, whatever they are, in any environment, until I’ve understood them. By contrast she’s more capable of “exploiting” unpredictable opportunities as they arise. But the opportunities she and I are exposed to are constrained by our patterns of attention.

DirectedEvolution Feb 13, 2025, 7:25 PM
4 points
0
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: Gunnar_Zarncke’s Shortform
There is trust in the practical abilities. Right now it is low, but that will only go up.
Part of the learning curve for using existing AI is calibrating trust and verifying answers, conditional on use case. A hallmark of inexperienced AI users is taking its replies at face value, without checking.
I do expect that over time, AI will become more trustworthy for daily users. But that is compatible with the trust users place in it decreasing as they familiarize themselves with the technology and learn its limitations.

DirectedEvolution Feb 3, 2025, 7:21 AM
17 points
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Viliam’s Shortform
I’ve participated in several alternative communities over the course of my life, and all became mired in scandal. The first was my college, where tolerance of hard drug use by the administration resulted in multiple OD deaths in my time there. The second was in my 20s in an intentional living and festival culture, when a major community figure was accused by multiple women of drugging and raping them while unconscious. The third was the EA and rationality community, which of course has had one scandal after another for years.
My model is that drugs, extreme ideas, mental illness, economic precarity, alternative cultures and institutions, power differences, and violent behavior are mutually reinforcing. Rationalists may drastically underestimate how intensely the recruitment funnel they’ve created selects for interest by disturbed people. Or the extent to which features correlated with the movement, like lifestyle experimentation, alternative spirituality or drug use, may be the central attractions for some, using rationality as a pretext. It’s the opposite of evaporative cooling—it’s condensation of crazy.
My belief is that to counteract this, it’s necessary to promote some level of conformism and convention to the standards and norms of society at large. Think of academia in STEM. Yes, the people and jobs are unusual. But the requirement for participants to repeatedly integrate into new departments at new universities repeatedly and work with many collaborators and a constant churn of new students from around the world makes for a melting pot culture where condensation of crazy is mitigated on a per capita basis.

In short, it seems to me that it’s in the very nature of niche movements and alternative communities to generate scandal for systematic sociological reasons. There is probably no way to retain the niche alt community structure without the scandal. Individuals will have to choose whether or not they prioritize a low frequency of scandal, or having the community exist in its present form.

A question I ask when sizing up a community is “do these people seem likely to be much more scandal-prone than the average church, sports team or workplace?” I also ask this for people I am considering getting to know. I go with my intuition and choose how to engage accordingly.

DirectedEvolution Jan 25, 2025, 2:50 AM
2 points
−2
on: Mechanisms too simple for humans to design
We can do the same with living organisms. The human genome contains about 6.2 billion nucleotides. Since there are 4 nucleotides (A, T, G, C), we need two bits for each of them, and since there are 8 bits in a byte, that gives us around 1.55 GB of data.
In other words, all the information that controls the shape of your face, your bones, your organs and every single enzyme inside them – all of that takes less storage space than Microsoft Word™.
There are two ways to see this is incorrect.
1. DNA’s ability to structure an organism is mediated through its chemical mileau. It is densely, dynamically regulated through a complex and dense mesh of proteins and regulatory RNA and small signaling molecules at every timepoint in every organism throughout the life cycle. Disruption of that chemical mileau renders the organism nonviable. This is a separate issue from the fact that evolution overwhelmingly operates on DNA sequence.
2. The DNA in a particular organism/cell is one point in a very long series of complex inheretance chains going back 4.5 billion years. I’m comfortable rounding off the maximum complexity of the soma to the maximum possible complexity of the complete set of ancestral DNA sequences. But we can go further by noticing that an individual’s DNA sequence is not just the combination of their direct ancestors—the entire ancestral lineage at every step is sampled from a distribution of possible genomes that is produced from mechanisms impacting reproduction.
In a more mathematical sense, while it’s true that, conditional on a specific non-stochastic function, the number of values in the output set is less than or equal to the number of values in the input set, if the function can vary freely then there is no such constraint.
The soma might be viewed as a stochastic function mapping DNA inputs to phenotypic outputs. The stochastic aspect gives a much larger number of theoretically possible outputs from the same input set. And the fact that the ‘function’ (soma) itself varies from organism to organism increases the number of phenotypes that can be generated from a given amount of DNA still further.
All these arguments also apply to technology. MS Word ‘co-evolved’ with Windows, with programming languages, with hardware, and this context must be taken into account when thinking about how complex a machine is.

DirectedEvolution Jan 22, 2025, 2:59 AM
4 points
0
on: AllAmericanBreakfast’s Shortform
The CDC and other Federal agencies are not reporting updates. “It was not clear from the guidance given by the new administration whether the directive will affect more urgent communications, such as foodborne disease outbreaks, drug approvals and new bird flu cases.”

DirectedEvolution Jan 17, 2025, 4:10 AM
3 points
0
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
I drink about 400mg of caffeine daily through coffee and Coke Zero. It helps me process complex ideas quickly, consider alternatives, and lifts my mood.
Without it, I get frustrated when I can’t follow arguments or understand ideas, often rejecting them or settling for “good enough.” Caffeine gives me the clarity and energy to stay open to new ideas and better solutions.