dripgrind

Karma: 273

dripgrind 18 Oct 2018 12:41 UTC
3 points
on: Coordination Problems in Evolution: The Rise of Eukaryotes
Nick Lane’s book The Vital Question has a great discussion of endosymbiosis in terms of metabolism. The point of the book is that all metabolism is powered by a proton gradient. It becomes very inefficient to maintain that in a larger cell, so having smaller subcompartments within a larger cell where metabolism can take place (like mitochondria) is vital for getting bigger. (There are some giant bacteria, but they have unusual metabolic adaptations). I think he also discusses why mitochondria need to retain the key genes for metabolism—I think it’s to do with timely regulation.

dripgrind 26 Jun 2012 1:41 UTC
−11 points
on: Thwarting a Catholic conversion?
[Executive summary: solve the underlying causes of your problem by becoming Pope]

I think it’s a mistake to focus too much on the case of one particular convert to Catholicism simply because you know her personally. To do that is to fall prey to the availability heuristic.

The root cause of your problem with your friend is that the Catholic Church exists as a powerful and influential organisation which continues to promote its weird dogma, polluting Leah’s mind along with the minds of millions of others. Before investing time and effort trying to flip her back to the side of reason, you should evaluate the costs and benefits of destroying the Church as an effective entity. I will now outline a method by which you and around 20 like-minded friends could do just that.

The Catholic Church is based in a tiny pseudo-state called Vatican City State. It has no permanent population and no true army, the Swiss Guard being more of a ceremonial bodyguard force (although they do have modern firearms as well as the cool-looking pikes).

What I propose is that you wait until the current Pope dies (not long now!) and a conclave has been assembled, then rush Vatican City in an infantry-style terrorist assault. There are 150 or so of the Swiss Guard but you could divide their forces by having some of you occupy a building, display simulated explosives and make fake demands. Your true targets are the cardinals who are there to elect a new Pope.

Once you capture the cardinals, simply force them at gunpoint to elect you Pope. In the event that you’re not already a Bishop and therefore not an eligible candidate for the Papacy, simply mount a privilege escalation attack, whereby you force them to elect you to successively higher offices until you become a valid Pope. I anticipate that this process will be completed before the Italian state can mount an effective special forces operation to kill you.

Now you are Pope, you are the sovereign of the Vatican City State. You can pardon your co-conspirators, and appoint them as ambassadors so they have diplomatic immunity outside VSS. You can then use your papal infallibility to remove all the problematic doctrines of the Church (homophobia, opposition to birth control/abortion, etc.) and bring all the child rapists it has shielded and enabled to justice. Or you could change all Catholic doctrines to those of Pastafarianism. Either way, the appeal of Catholicism to your friend would be destroyed as its so-called timeless moral insights are revealed as human constructs. One or (preferably) more “True” Catholic churches will arise to challenge your claim to the Papacy, causing decades of damaging, hilarious schisms, during which you should make sure to declare several Antipopes.

I suggest you treat this post as if it’s a joke, and then seek military training as soon as possible.

dripgrind 26 Jun 2012 1:14 UTC
−1 points
on: Thwarting a Catholic conversion?
[Executive summary: solve the underlying causes of your problem by becoming Pope]

I think it’s a mistake to focus too much on the case of one particular convert to Catholicism simply because you know her personally. To do that is to fall prey to the availability heuristic.

The root cause of your problem with your friend is that the Catholic Church exists as a powerful and influential organisation which continues to promote its weird dogma, polluting Leah’s mind along with millions of others. Before investing time and effort trying to flip her back to the side of reason, you should consider whether you could destroy the Church and dam the river of poison at its source. I will now outline a metho

dripgrind 30 Jul 2011 1:21 UTC
3 points
in reply to: handoflixue’s comment on: On the unpopularity of cryonics: life sucks, but at least then you die
When I said “you assume people have to invest their own money to ensure their health” I was obviously referring to preventative medical interventions, which is what you were actually asking about, not cryonics.

The breast/ovarian cancer risk genes are BRCA ¹⁄₂ - I seem to remember reading that half of carriers opt for some kind of preventative surgery, although that was in a lifestyle magazine article called something like “I CUT OFF MY PERFECT BREASTS” so it may not be entirely reliable. I’m sure it’s not just a tiny minority who opt for it, though. I’m sure there are better figures on Google Scholar.

If you consider the cost of taking statins from age 40 to 80, in total that’s a pricy intervention.

Maybe the lack of people using expensive preventative measures is because few of them exist—or few of them have benefits which outweigh the side-effects/pain/costs—not that people don’t want them in general. If there was a pill that cost $30,000 and made you immune to all cancer with no side effects, I’m sure everyone would want it.

I think the real issue is that people don’t consider cryonics to be “healthcare”. That seems reasonable, because it’s a mixture of healthcare and time travel into an unknown future where you might be put in a zoo by robots for all anybody knows.

dripgrind 29 Jul 2011 22:36 UTC
133 points
in reply to: Plasmon’s comment on: The $125,000 Summer Singularity Challenge
Only on this site would you see perfectly ordinary charity fundraising techniques described as “dark arts”, while in the next article over, the community laments the poor image of the concept of beheading corpses and then making them rise again.
What links here?
- Eliezer Yudkowsky's comment on Help Fund Lukeprog at SIAI by Eliezer Yudkowsky (24 Aug 2011 21:26 UTC; 8 points)

dripgrind 29 Jul 2011 22:28 UTC
9 points
in reply to: handoflixue’s comment on: On the unpopularity of cryonics: life sucks, but at least then you die
Women with a high hereditary risk of breast cancer sometimes opt to have both their breasts removed pre-emptively. People take statins and blood pressure drugs for years to prevent heart attacks. Don’t you have eye tests and dental checkups on a precautionary basis? There’s plenty of preventative medical care.

Maybe the availability and marketing varies between countries—the fact that you assume people have to invest their own money to ensure their health suggests you’re from the US or another country with a bad healthcare system. My country has a national health service which takes an interest in encouraging preventative medicines like statins, helping people give up smoking, and so on, since that saves it money overall. I’m sure the allocation of preventative care is far from ideal and shaped by political and social factors and drug company lobbying, but it does exist.

It would be a bad tradeoff to go through painful appendectomy to prevent the small chance that you might get appendicitis (and you can get your appendix removed when it’s actually infected, and the appendix may have an evolutionary function acting as a reservoir of gut bacteria, and it can also be used to reconstruct the bladder).

dripgrind 15 Jul 2011 1:02 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: Nick_Tarleton’s comment on: My true rejection
You’re right that the motivation would be obvious today (to a certain tiny subset of geeky people). But what if there had been a decade of rising anti-AI feeling amongst the general population before the assassinations? Marches, direct actions, carried out with animal-rights style fervour? I’m sure that could all be stirred up with the right fanfiction (“Harry Potter And The Monster In The Chinese Room”).

I understand what ethical injunctions are—but would SIAI be bound by them given their apparent “torture someone to avoid trillions of people having to blink” hyper-utilitarianism?

dripgrind 15 Jul 2011 0:56 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: My true rejection

To build a superintelligence that actually maximizes IBM’s share price in a normal way that the CEO of IBM would >approve of would require solving the friendly AI problem but then changing a couple of lines of code.

That assumes that being Friendly to all of humanity is just as easy as being Friendly to a small subset.

Surely it’s much harder to make all of humanity happy than to make IBM’s stockholders happy? I mean, a FAI that does the latter is far less constrained, but it’s still not going to convert the universe into computronium.

dripgrind 15 Jul 2011 0:50 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Normal_Anomaly’s comment on: My true rejection
I’m not seriously suggesting that. Also, I am just some internet random and not affiliated with the SIAI.

I think my key point is that the dynamics of society are going to militate against deploying Friendly AI, even if it is shown to be possible. If I do a next draft I will drop the silly assassination point in favour of tracking AGI projects and lobbying to get them defunded if they look dangerous.

dripgrind 15 Jul 2011 0:41 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Normal_Anomaly’s comment on: My true rejection
OK, what about the case where there’s a CEV theory which can extrapolate the volition of all humans, or a subset of them? It’s not suicide for you to tell the AI “coherently extrapolate my volition/the shareholders’ volition”. But it might be hell for the people whose interests aren’t taken into account.

dripgrind 15 Jul 2011 0:34 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Nick_Tarleton’s comment on: My true rejection

This sounds in the direction of modeling AGI researchers as selfish mutants. Other motivations (e.g. poor Friendliness >theories) and accidents (by researchers who don’t understand the danger, or underestimate what they’ve built) are also >likely.

This matters, since if AGI researchers aren’t selfish mutants, you can encourage them to see the need for safety, and >this is one goal of SIAI’s outreach.

AGI researchers might not be selfish mutants, but they could still be embedded in corporate structures which make them act that way. If they are a small startup where researchers are in charge, outreach could be useful. What if they’re in a big corporation, and they’re under pressure to ignore outside influences? (What kind of organisation is most likely to come up with a super-AI, if that’s how it happens?)

If FAI does become a serious concern, nothing would stop corporations from faking compliance but actually implementing flawed systems, just as many software companies put more effort into reassuring customers that their products are secure than actually fixing security flaws.

Realistically, how often do researchers in a particular company come to realise what they’re doing is dangerous and blow the whistle? The reason whistleblowers are lionised in popular culture is precisely because they’re so rare. Told to do something evil or dangerous, most people will knuckle under, and rationalise what they’re doing or deny responsibility.

I once worked for a company which made dangerously poor medical software—an epidemiological study showed that deploying their software raised child mortality—and the attitude of the coders was to scoff at the idea that what they were doing could be bad. They even joked about “killing babies”.

Maybe it would be a good idea to monitor what companies are likely to come up with an AGI. If you need a supercomputer to run one, then presumably it’s either going to be a big company or an academic project?

dripgrind 15 Jul 2011 0:06 UTC
0 points
in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: My true rejection
Ah, another point about maximising. What if the AI uses CEV of the programmers or the corporation? In other words, it’s programmed to maximise their wealth in a way they would actually want? Solving that problem is a subset of Friendliness.

dripgrind 14 Jul 2011 23:41 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Rationality Market Research
Another idea—if you can’t find someone skilled in market research to do this for you at a discount or free, read a textbook about how to assess potential new brands to help with designing the survey.

dripgrind 14 Jul 2011 23:36 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: timtyler’s comment on: My true rejection
My point, then, is that as well as heroically trying to come up with a theory of Friendly AI, it might be a good idea to heroically stop the deployment of unFriendly AI.

dripgrind 14 Jul 2011 23:34 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: Nick_Tarleton’s comment on: My true rejection
Oh, I’m not saying that SIAI should do it openly. Just that, according to their belief system, they should sponsor false-flag cells who would (perhaps without knowing the master they truly serve). The absence of such false-flag cells indicates that SIAI aren’t doing it—although their presence wouldn’t prove they were. That’s the whole idea of “false-flag”.

If you really believed that unFriendly AI was going to dissolve the whole of humanity into smileys/jelly/paperclips, then whacking a few reckless computer geeks would be a small price to pay, ethical injunctions or no ethical injunctions. You know, “shut up and multiply”, trillion specks, and all that.

dripgrind 14 Jul 2011 23:26 UTC
5 points
in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: My true rejection
I freely admit there are ethical issues with a secret assassination programme. But what’s wrong with lobbying politicians to retard the progress of unFriendly AI projects, regulate AI, etc? You could easily persuade conservatives to pretend to be scared about human-level AI on theological/moral/job-preservation grounds. Why not start shaping the debate and pushing the Overton window now?

I do understand what SIAI argues what an unFriendly intelligence would do if programmed to maximize some financial metric. I just don’t believe that a corporation in a position to deploy a super-AI would understand or heed SIAI’s argument. After all, corporations maximise short-term profit against their long-term interests all the time—a topical example is News International.

dripgrind 14 Jul 2011 23:17 UTC
5 points
in reply to: falenas108’s comment on: My true rejection
Can you give me some references for the idea that “you don’t need to have solved the AGI problem to have solved friendliness”? I’m not saying it’s not true, I just want to improve this article.

Let’s taboo “solved” for a minute.

Say you have a detailed, rigorous theory of Friendliness, but you don’t have it implemented in code as part of an AGI. You are racing with your competitor to code a self-improving super-AGI. Isn’t it still quicker to implement something that doesn’t incorporate Friendliness?

To me, it seems like, even if the theory was settled, Friendliness would be an additional feature you would have to code into an AI that would take extra time and effort.

What I’m getting at is that, throughout the history of computing, the version of a system with desirable property X, even if the theoretical benefits of X are well known by the academy, has tended to be implemented and deployed commercially after the version without X. For example, it would have been better for the general public and web developers if web browsers obeyed W3C specifications and didn’t have any extra proprietary tags—but in practice, commercial pressures meant that companies made grossly non-compliant browsers for years until eventually they started moving towards compliance.

The “Friendly browser” theory was solved, but compliant and non-compliant browsers still weren’t on basically equal footing.

(Now, you might say that CEV will be way more mathematical and rigorous than browser specifications—but the only important point for my argument is that it will take more effort to implement than the alternative).

Now you could say that browser compliance is a fairly trvial matter, and corporations will be more cautious about deploying AGI. But the potential gain from deploying a super-AI first would surely be much greater than the benefit of supporting the blink tag or whatever—so the incentive to rationalise away the perceived dangers will be much greater.

dripgrind 14 Jul 2011 22:51 UTC
8 points
in reply to: Armok_GoB’s comment on: My true rejection
I really don’t know what you mean.

dripgrind 14 Jul 2011 22:46 UTC
12 points
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Rationality Market Research
Action can be way worse than inaction, if what you end up doing is misleading yourself or doing harm to your cause.

I don’t think what you’ve done is necessarily misleading or harmful, as long as you don’t consider it anything more than incomplete, qualitative research into the range of responses the word “rationality” gets from random people.

But you really, really need to decide what the point of this exercise is. Are you trying to gather useful data, or make people feel more positive about rationality, or just get comfortable talking to random people? It kind of seems like at the moment, you mainly want to find post-hoc reasons why the exercise was “useful”.

Here’s my suggestion: if you’re trying to do a survey, decide on your demographic(s) of interest. Get everyone on Less Wrong to ask around until they find a sympathiser who works in a branding/marketing survey organisation, and can slip in an extra question in a survey, asking how people respond to the term “rationality”.

Failing that, collaboratively draw up a proper survey protocol and get Less Wrongers to administer it to a random sample of a people. Think it through before you do it: e.g. stopping people outside on the street would be more representative than limiting it to a certain building. You could signal that you’re an official survey person by carrying a clipboard (not by wielding a recording device). You could improve participation by stating initially that you only have one question which will take 15 seconds, then not trying to start a discussion. You could improve participation among younger women by making it clear that you’re doing a survey, so they’re not concerned you’re trying to start an abstract philosophical conversation as a pretext to get them into bed.

I think this could have great potential, especially if you comparatively test alternative terms to “rationality”. Richard Dawkins tried to popularise the term “Brights” for people who don’t believe in the supernatural. If he’d done even the amount of field testing you have already done, he would have realised it sounds unsufferably smug. So I think your impulse to do market research is a good one.

My true rejection

dripgrind14 Jul 2011 22:04 UTC

−29 points

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