jmh

Karma: 1,431

jmh 17 Dec 2024 14:06 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: AnthonyC’s comment on: Why comparative advantage does not help horses
Yes, all those conjectures are possible as we don’t yet know what the reality will be—it is currently all conjecture.
The counter argument to yours I think is just what opportunities is the AI giving up to do whatever humans might be left to do? What is the marginal value of all the things this ASI might be able to be doing that we cannot yet even conceive of?
I think the suggestion of a negative value is just out of scope here as it doesn’t fit into theory of comparative advantage. That was kind of the point of the OP. It is fine to say comparative advantage will not apply but we lack any proof of that and have plenty of examples where it actually does hold even when there is a clear absolute advantage for one side. Trying to reject the proposition by assuming it away seems a weak argument.

jmh 16 Dec 2024 16:05 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: AnthonyC’s comment on: Why comparative advantage does not help horses
I’m not sure that is the correct take in the context of Comparative Advantage.
It would not matter if the SI could produce more than humans in a direct comparison but what the opportunity cost for the SI might be. If the ASI is shifting efforts that would have produced more value to it than it gets from the $77 sunlight output AND that delta in value is greater than the lower productivity of the humans then the trade makes sense to the ASI.
Seems to me the questions here are about resource constraints and whether or not an ASI does or does not need to confront them in a meaningful way.

jmh 30 Nov 2024 0:54 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: denkenberger’s comment on: Repeal the Jones Act of 1920
You’re touching on one of the questions that occurred to me. What do the current and post-Jones transportation flows look like? While I agree that the law must shift some from shipping to truck, rail or pipeline I’m not sure I would expect massive changes here. Do you have some data on that point?

jmh 30 Nov 2024 0:28 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: Information vs Assurance
I think one clear aspect of the stories here, yours and John’s, relates to what I’ll call asymmetric information flows. Basically, the times at which the information, that no one is trying to keep secret, become known to the relevant parties.
Of course understanding what a good update frequency is for various situations should be is a tricky thing itself.

jmh 25 Nov 2024 0:18 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: abramdemski’s comment on: Hell is wasted on the evil
If I’m reading this correctly, then generally we’re seeing a rather flat payoff curve over most “do good opportunities” and the rare max should stand out like a sore thumb when taking a good look. So those really should be things do-gooders will jump on quickly. (Note, that doesn’t mean they are done quickly or that additional assistance is not important.)
While not as obvious, it probably also means that a lot of more mundane opportunities are getting ignored. That comes from an insight offered in one of my classes from years back asking why so much clumping (think fad type stuff here) exists when the marginal utility of the consumed good is pretty much equal to all the other goods that could have been consumer. In other words, when the opportunity cost is zero why is everyone doing the same thing?
I suspect we could see something like that in the “do good” space. Therefore, taking the path not followed could be a very good thing.

jmh 24 Nov 2024 5:28 UTC
2 points
0
on: Neutrality
One point I’m not sure about with the idea of neutrality is neutrality of process or of outcome. Or would that distinction not matter to your interests here?

jmh 21 Nov 2024 8:56 UTC
3 points
0
on: Neutrality
Interesting but I’ve just skim so will need to come back. With that caveat made, I seem to have had a couple of thought that keep recurring for me that seem compatible or complementary with your thoughts.
First, where do we define the margin between public and private. It strikes me that a fair amount of social strife does revolve around a tension here. We live in a dynamic world so thinking that the sphere of private actions will remain static seem unlikely but as the world changed (knowledge, applied knowledge driving technology change, movement of people resulting in cultural transmission and tensions...) will be forces resulting in a change in the line between public and private.
While I’m not entirely sure it is the best framing, I do think of this in the form of externalities. Negative externalities are the more challenging form. What I think starts happening is that we live in t=0 and some set of private activities are producing very little negative impacts on others. But we find by t=10 some of the elements in that set of private activities are now producing a large enough total negative external effect that:
1. People are able to start seeing cause and effect
2. The costs to others are sufficient to over come the organizational and transactional costs of using social infrastructures to seek relief for the harms. Those can be formal in the sense of courts and government law/regulation requests. But also informal in various forms—the people engaging in the activities loose reputation, don’t get invited to the good parties any more, people don’t want to talk with them or be seen with them any more, perhaps even more aggressive responses.
At some point either most accept that a new definition of “private” exists and the old ways have changed or society reached the point that those who have not adapted will be treated as criminal and removed from society.
The other thing I’ve been thinking about is related. One hears the where’s my flying car, it’s the 21st Century already quip now and then. But I think a better one might be: It’s the 21st Century, why am I still living under and 18th Century form of government?
I think these relate some of your post in that a lot of the social conflict you point to is driven by the shifting margin between public and private sphere of action. As that margin shifts people use the government to address those new conflicts within the society. But few if any governments differ substantially from those that have existed for centuries. I would characterize that vision of government, even when thinking of representative democracies, as that of an actor/agent. Government takes actions, just like the private members of society do. It should function, as you say, in a neutral way. Part of the failing there comes from government, being an actor/agent, then has its own interests, agendas and biases.
That government as an active participant contrasts a bit with how I think most people think of markets. Markets don’t really do anything. They are simply an environment in which active entities come and interact with each other. Markets don’t set price or quality or even really type of item—these are all unplanned outputs. The market itself is indifferent to all those, it’s neutral in the sense you use that term.
Well, in the 21st Century might we not think that how governments are structured might also shift? While I am far from sure that the shift would be correctly called divestiture or privatization (which seems most people think of when talking about fixing government—or for some calling for increasing what its already doing) I do think the shift might be away from an acting entity and more into some type of passive environment that has some commonality with markets. In a very real sense governments are already a type of market setting but not a price/money exchange one (the representatives are not quite but out bids and offers on votes) but clearly these is an demand mediation and supply process going on. But currently the market-like aspect of government is about integrating voter/members of society demands and then the government makes a decision and takes the actions it wants. I would think some areas might be suitable for taking out the government being the actor and let the actions be decentralized among the people. Probably not individual action, I suspect some sub-agent presence will exist to reduce organizational/transaction costs but certainly the process would look more market-like and be a more neural setting. That might well then remove a lot of the divisiveness and conflict we see with the existing “old school” forms of government.
That is all probably a bit poorly written and expressed but it’s a quick dump of a couple of not fully thought out ideas.

jmh 21 Nov 2024 5:07 UTC
2 points
0
on: “It’s a 10% chance which I did 10 times, so it should be 100%”
Years ago when I was hanging out with day traders there was a heuristic they all seemed to hold. If their trading model was producing winning trades two out of three times they thought the model was good and could be used. No one ever suggested why that particular rate was the shared meme/norm—why not 4 out of 5 or 3 out of 5. I wonder if empirically (or just intuitively over time) they simply approximated the results in this post.
Or maybe just a coincidence, but generally when money is at stake I think the common practices will tend to reflect some fundamental fact of the environment.

jmh 29 Oct 2024 0:31 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Nutrition Capsule’s comment on: Overcoming Bias Anthology
Could you clarify a bit here. Is Hanson talking about specific cultures or all of the instances of culture?

jmh 28 Oct 2024 2:02 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Gavriel Kleinwaks’s comment on: If far-UV is so great, why isn’t it everywhere?
Thanks that does help clarify the challenges for me.

jmh 28 Oct 2024 1:55 UTC
2 points
0
on: Open Thread Fall 2024
I was just scrolling through Metaculus and its predictions for the US Elections. I noticed that pretty much every case was a conditional If Trump wins/If doesn’t win. Had two thought about the estimates for these. All seem to suggest the outcomes are worse under Trump. But that assessment of the outcome being worse is certainly subject to my own biases, values and preferences. (For example, for US voters is it really a bad outcome if the probability of China attacking Taiwan increases under Trump? I think so but other may well see the costs necessary to reduce the likelihood as high for something that is not something that actually involves the USA.)
So my first though was how much bias should I infer as present in these probability estimates? I’m not sure. But that does relate a bit to my other thought.
In one sense you could naively apply the p, therefore not p is the outcome for the other candidate as only two actually exist. But I think it is also clear that the two probability distributions don’t come from the same pool so conceivably you could change the name to Harris and get the exact same estimates.
So I was thinking, what if Metaculus did run the two cases side by side? Would seeing p(Haris) + p(Trump) significantly different than 1 suggest one should have lower confidence in the estimates? I am not sure about that.
What if we see something like p(H) approximately equale to p(T)? does that suggest the selected outcome is poorly chosen as it is largely independant of the elected candidate so the estimates are largely meaninless in terms of election outcomes? I have a stronger sense this is the case.
So my bottome line now is that I should likely not hold a high confidence that the estimates on these outcomes are really meaninful with regards to the election impacts.

jmh 20 Oct 2024 7:20 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Steve Roth’s comment on: If far-UV is so great, why isn’t it everywhere?
Had something of a similar reaction but the note about far-UV not having the same problems as other UV serilization (i.e., also harmful to humans) I gather the point is about locality. UV in ducks will kill viri in the air system. But the spread of an airborn illness goes host-to-target before it passed through the air system.
As such seems that while the in-duct UV solution would help limit spread, it’s not going to do much to clean the air in the room while people are in it exhailing, coughing or sneezing, talking.…
I suspect it does little to protect the people directly next/in front of a contagious person but probably good for those practicing that old 6 foot rule (or whatever the arbitray distancing rule was).
Just my guess though.

jmh 20 Oct 2024 7:13 UTC
4 points
0
on: If far-UV is so great, why isn’t it everywhere?
Quick comment regarding research.
If far-UV is really so great, and not that simple, I would assume that any company that would be selling and installing might not be some small Mom and Pop type operation. If that holds, why are the companies that want to promote and sell the systems using them and then collecting the data?
Or is would that type of investment be seen as too costly even for those with a direct interest in producing the results to bolster sales and increase the size of the network/ecosystem?

jmh 20 Oct 2024 6:59 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: DiamondSolstice’s comment on: Open Thread Fall 2024
I think perhaps a first one might be:
On what evidence do I conclude what I think is know is correct/factual/true and how strong is that evidence? To what extent have I verified that view and just how extensively should I verify the evidence?
After that might be a similar approach to the implications or outcomes of applying actions based on what one holds as truth/fact.
I tend to think of rationality as a process rather than endpoint. Which isn’t to say that the destination is not important but clearly without the journey the destination is just a thought or dream. That first of a thousand steps thing.

jmh 8 Oct 2024 0:42 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: cubefox’s comment on: Why I’m not a Bayesian
What happens when Bob can be found in or out of the set of bald things at different times or in different situations, but we might not understand (or even be well aware) of the conditions that drive Bob’s membership in the set when we’re evaluating baldness and Bob?
Can membership in baldness turn out to be some type of quantum state thing?
That might be a basis for separating the concept of fuzzy language and fuzzy truth.But I would agree that if we can identify all possible cases where Bob is or is not in the set of baldness one might claim truth is no longer fuzzy but one needs to then prove that knowledge of all possible states has been established I think.

jmh 28 Sep 2024 15:29 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Ruby’s comment on: Ruby’s Shortform Feed
I really like the observation in your Further Thoughts point. I do think that is a problem people need to look at as I would guess many will view the government involvement from a acting in public interests view rather than acting in either self interest (as problematic as that migh be when the players keep changing) or from a special interest/public choice perspective.
Probably some great historical analysis already written about events in the past that might serve as indicators of the pros and cons here. Any historians in the group here?

jmh 24 Sep 2024 22:43 UTC
0 points
0
in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: What are the best arguments for/against AIs being “slightly ‘nice’”?
Strong upvote based on the first sentence. I often wonder why people think an ASI/AGI will want anything that humans do or even see the same things that biological life sees as resources. But it seems like under the covers of many arguments here that is largely assumed true.

jmh 24 Sep 2024 22:34 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Matthew Barnett’s comment on: The Sun is big, but superintelligences will not spare Earth a little sunlight
I am a bit confused on point 2. Other than trading or doing it your selfs what other ways are you thinking about getting something?

jmh 17 Sep 2024 14:09 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: My AI Model Delta Compared To Christiano
That is certainly a more directly related, non-obvious aspect for verification. Thanks.

jmh 16 Sep 2024 13:57 UTC
7 points
0
in reply to: Mark Xu’s comment on: My AI Model Delta Compared To Christiano
I assumed John was pointing at verifying that perhaps the chemicals used in the production of the chair might have some really bad impact on the environmnet, start causing a problem with the food chain eco system and make food much scarcers for everyone—including the person who bought the chair—in the meaningfully near future. Something a long those lines.
As you note, verifying the chair functions as you want—as a place to sit that is comfortable—is pretty easy. Most of us probably do that without even really thinking about it. But will this chair “kill me” in the future is not so obvious or easy to assess.
I suspect at the core, this is a question about an assumption about evaluating a simple/non-complex world and doing so in an inherently complex world do doesn’t allow true separability in simple and independant structures.