Furcas

Karma: 1,602

Furcas 5 May 2023 5:05 UTC
10 points
3
in reply to: leogao’s comment on: Google “We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI”
This comment has gotten lots of upvotes but, has anyone here tried Vicuna-13B?

Furcas 13 Apr 2023 0:53 UTC
22 points
6
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: My Objections to “We’re All Gonna Die with Eliezer Yudkowsky”
Well, this is insanely disappointing. Yes, the OP shouldn’t have directly replied to the Bankless podcast like that, but it’s not like he didn’t read your List of Lethalities, or your other writing on AGI risk. You really have no excuse for brushing off very thorough and honest criticism such as this, particularly the sections that talk about alignment.
And as others have noted, Eliezer Yudkowsky, of all people, complaining about a blog post being long is the height of irony.
This is coming from someone who’s mostly agreed with you on AGI risk since reading the Sequences, years ago, and who’s donated to MIRI, by the way.
On the bright side, this does make me (slightly) update my probability of doom downwards.

Furcas 1 Apr 2023 7:22 UTC
10 points
−2
on: Hooray for stepping out of the limelight
You may be right about Deepmind’s intentions in general but, I’m certain that the reason they didn’t brag about AlphaStar is because it didn’t quite succeed. There never was an official series between the best SC2 player in the world and AlphaStar. And, once Grandmaster-level players got a bit used to playing against AlphaStar, even they could beat it, to say nothing of pros. AlphaStar had excellent micro-management and decent tactics, but zero strategic ability. It had the appearance of strategic thinking because there were in fact multiple AlphaStars, each one having learned a different build during training. But then each instance would always execute that build. We never saw AlphaStar do something as elementary as scouting the enemy’s army composition and building the units that would best counter it.
So Deepmind saw they had only partially succeeded, but for some reason instead of continuing their work on AlphaStar they decided to declare victory and quietly move on to another project.

Furcas 26 Jul 2017 4:24 UTC
3 points
on: What Are The Chances of Actually Achieving FAI?
I’d guess 1%. The small minority of AI researchers working on FAI will have to find the right solutions to a set of extremely difficult problems on the first try, before the (much better funded!) majority of AI researchers solve the vastly easier problem of Unfriendly AGI.

Furcas 31 Jan 2017 1:45 UTC
4 points
on: Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness
Huh. Is it possible that the corpus callosum has (at least partially) healed since the original studies? Or that some other connection has formed between the hemispheres in the years since the operation?

Furcas 24 Sep 2016 15:39 UTC
31 points
on: MIRI’s 2016 Fundraiser
Donated $500!

Furcas 15 Sep 2016 17:01 UTC
0 points
in reply to: reguru’s comment on: Open thread, Sep. 12 - Sep. 18, 2016
Yes it was video. As Brillyant mentioned, the official version will be released on the 29th of September. It’s possible someone will upload it before then (again), but AFAIK nobody has since the video I linked was taken down.

Furcas 13 Sep 2016 19:02 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Manfred’s comment on: Open thread, Sep. 12 - Sep. 18, 2016
I changed the link to the audio, should work now.

Furcas 13 Sep 2016 15:03 UTC
6 points
on: Open thread, Sep. 12 - Sep. 18, 2016
Sam Harris’ TED talk on AGI existential risk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZhGkKFH1x0&feature=youtu.be

ETA: It’s been taken down, probably so TED can upload it on their own channel. Here’s the audio in the meantime: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5xcnhOBS2UhZXpyaW9YR3hHU1k

Furcas 9 Jul 2016 19:26 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Tem42’s comment on: November 2013 Media Thread
If you don’t like it now, you never will.

Furcas 5 Jul 2016 21:11 UTC
7 points
in reply to: CarlJ’s comment on: Open thread, Jul. 04 - Jul. 10, 2016
http://lesswrong.com/lw/rf/ghosts_in_the_machine/

Furcas 5 Jul 2016 18:58 UTC
2 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Zombies Redacted
Yeah, I edited my comment after reading kilobug’s.

Furcas 4 Jul 2016 14:48 UTC
3 points
in reply to: TheAncientGeek’s comment on: Zombies Redacted
Ahh, it wasn’t meant to be snarky. I saw an opportunity to try and get Eliezer to fess up, that’s all. :)

Furcas 2 Jul 2016 22:20 UTC
14 points
0
on: Zombies Redacted
Nice.

So, when are you going to tell us your solution to the hard problem of consciousness?

Edited to add: The above wasn’t meant as a sarcastic objection to Eliezer’s post. I’m totally convinced by his arguments, and even if I wasn’t I don’t think not having a solution to the hard problem is a greater problem for reductionism than for dualism (of any kind). I was seriously asking Eliezer to share his solution, because he seems to think he has one.

Furcas 13 May 2016 15:51 UTC
−1 points
on: Newcomb versus dust specks
IMO since people are patterns (and not instances of patterns), there’s still only one person in the universe regardless of how many perfect copies of me there are. So I choose dust specks. Looks like the predictor isn’t so perfect. :P

Furcas 2 May 2016 21:31 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: My Kind of Moral Responsibility

Why don’t you go ask some.

I mentioned three crucial caveats. I think it would be difficult to find Christians in 2016 who have no doubts and swallow the bullet about the implications of Christianity. It would be a lot easier a few hundred years ago.

Huh? The “concept” of Christianity hasn’t changed since the Middle Ages

What I mean is that the religious beliefs of the majority of people who call themselves Christians have changed a lot since medieval times.

We are talking here about what you can, should, or must sacrifice to get closer to the One True Goal (which in Christianity is salvation). Your answer is “everything”. Why? Because the One True Goal justifies everything including things people call “horrors”. Am I reading you wrong?

I don’t see the relevance of what you call a “One True Goal”. I mean, One True Goal as opposed to what? Several Sorta True Goals? Ultimately, no matter what your goals are, you will necessarily be willing to sacrifice things that are less important to you in order to achieve them. Actions are justified as they relate to the accomplishment of a goal, or a set of goals.

If I were convinced that Roger is going to detonate a nuclear bomb in New York, I would feel justified (and obliged) to murder him, because like most of the people I know, I have the goal to prevent millions of innocents from dying. And yet, if I believed that Roger is going to do this on bad or non-existent evidence, the odds are that I would be killing an innocent man for no good reason. There would be nothing wrong with my goal (One True or not), only with my rationality. I don’t see any fundamental difference between this scenario and the one we’ve been discussing.

Furcas 2 May 2016 19:10 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: My Kind of Moral Responsibility

Would real-life Christians who sincerely and wholeheartedly believe that Christianity is true agree that such acts are not horrible at all and, in fact, desirable and highly moral?

Yes? Of course? With the caveats that the concept of ‘Christianity’ is the medieval one you mentioned above, that these Christians really have no doubts about their beliefs, and that they swallow the bullet.

So once you think you have good evidence, all the horrors stop being horrors and become justified?

Are you trolling? Is the notion that the morality of actions is dependent on reality really that surprising to you?

Furcas 2 May 2016 18:32 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: My Kind of Moral Responsibility
Well, my point is that stating all the horrible things that Christians should do to (hypothetically) save people from eternal torment is not a good argument against ‘hard-core’ utilitarianism. These acts are only horrible because Christianity isn’t true. Therefore the antidote for these horrors is not, “don’t swallow the bullet”, it’s “don’t believe stuff without good evidence”.

Furcas 2 May 2016 17:52 UTC
7 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: My Kind of Moral Responsibility
Yes, I acknowledge all of that. Do you understand the consequence of not doing those things, if Christianity is true?

Eternal torment, for everyone you failed to convert.

Eternal. Torment.

Furcas 2 May 2016 17:09 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: My Kind of Moral Responsibility

The parallel should be obvious: if you believe in eternal (!) salvation and torment, absolutely anything on Earth can be sacrificed for a minute increase in the chance of salvation.

… yes? What’s wrong with that? Are you saying that, if you came across strong evidence that the Christian Heaven and Hell are real, you wouldn’t do absolutely anything necessary to get yourself and the people you care about to Heaven?

The medieval Christians you describe didn’t fail morally because they were hard-core utilitarians, they failed because they believed Christianity was true!