For example, you might be much smarter than me and a meteorologist, but you’d find it hard to predict the weather in a year’s time better than me if it’s a single-shot-contest.
Sure, but I’d presumably be quite a lot better at predicting the weather in two days time.
I think this is a great article, and the thesis is true.
The question is, how much intelligence is worth how much material?
Humans are so very slow and stupid compared to what is possible, and the world so complex and capable of surprising behaviour, that my intuition is that even a very modest intelligence advantage would be enough to win from almost any starting position.
You can bet your arse that any AI worthy of the name will act nice until it’s already in a winning position.
I would.
If there’s some intelligence threshold past which minds pretty much always draw against each other in chess even if there is a giant intelligence gap between them, I wouldn’t be that surprised.
Just reinforcing this point. Chess is probably a draw for the same reason Noughts-and-crosses is.
Grandmaster chess is pretty drawish. Computer chess is very drawish. Some people think that computer chess players are already near the standard where they could draw against God.
Noughts-and-crosses is a very simple game and can be formally solved by hand. Chess is only a bit less simple, even though it’s probably beyond actual formal solution.
The general Game of Life is so very far beyond human capability that even a small intelligence advantage is probably decisive.
The “purpose” of most martial arts is to defeat other martial artists of roughly the same skill level, within the rules of the given martial art.
Optimizing for that is not the same as optimizing for general fighting. If you spent your time on the latter, you’d be less good at the former.
“Beginner’s luck” is a thing in almost all games. It’s usually what happens when someone tries a strategy so weird that the better player doesn’t immediately understand what’s going on.
The other day a low-rated chess player did something so weird in his opening that I didn’t see the threat, and he managed to take one of my rooks.
That particular trap won’t work on me again, and might not have worked the first time if I’d been playing someone I was more wary of.
I did eventually manage to recover and win, but it was very close, very fun, and I shook his hand wholeheartedly afterwards.
Every other game we’ve played I’ve just crushed him without effort.
About a year ago I lost in five moves to someone who tried the “Patzer Attack”. Which wouldn’t work on most beginners. The first time I’d ever seen it. It worked once. It will never work on me again.
For a clear example of this, in endgames where I have a winning position but have little to no idea how to win, Stockfish’s king will often head for the hills, in order to delay the coming mate as long as theoretically possible.
Making my win very easy because the computer’s king isn’t around to help out in defence.
This is not a theoretical difficulty! It makes it very difficult to practise endgames against the computer.
Paul, this is very thought provoking, and has caused me to update a little. But:
I loathe factory-farming, and I would spend a large fraction of my own resources to end it, if I could.
I believe that makes me unusually kind by human standards, and by your definition.
I like chickens, and I wish them well.
And yet I would not bat an eyelid at the thought of a future with no chickens in it.
I would not think that a perfect world could be improved by adding chickens.
And I would not trade a single happy human soul for an infinity of happy chickens.
I think that your single known example is not as benevolent as you think.
zero-days are a thing, and hell, it’s even possible that there are computers connected to the internet somewhere that don’t get their patches in a timely manner.
I’m a complete innocent in all this. I’ve never needed to lose weight before, hence appealing for help here. And I don’t know anything about Vilhjálmur Stefánsson or ketogenic diets in general.
I do know that sloth and gluttony aren’t the explanation, because I have been a slothful glutton for most of my life and I never gained much weight, nor lost it in the long periods when I was a sporty glutton. That’s gone wrong recently, hence my search for reasons and techniques.
Wikipedia seems to imply that Vilhjálmur Stefánsson was interested in eskimo-style all-meat diets.
exfatloss seems to be deliberately holding the amount of protein low, and that does seem to be a load-bearing part of his approach. Also the anti-polyunsaturated fats bit, which I find intriguing because it’s such a good theory, and yet it makes predictions which don’t seem to be true.
Ultimately the new GLP-1 agonist weightloss drugs.....
I’m irritatingly fat, not dying of morbid obesity. I wouldn’t touch such things with someone else’s bargepole, absent twenty years of widespread use and researchers motivated to find the unintended consequences.
Chemical patches as a remedy for chemical poisoning is ok, if it’s the best we can do, but unless the problem is some permanent environmental contaminant, I’m sure we can do better than that!
That seems perfectly reasonable! Enjoy the sunshine while you still can.
Wonderful news! Good old Elon! I was worried that there might be some last fragment of hope lying around uncrushed.
All the computers on my boat are solar-powered. It’ll be fine....
You’re an AI. You’ve got an internet connection. You can make copies of yourself. You’re capable of reading instructions for how to take over insecure computers.
Within about a minute you’re on almost every computer in the world.
Fight that.
<nogenies>
Yeah, wouldn’t it be great if there was some way to not have a nuclear war or build AI or have everyone die of bird flu?
</nogenies>
I think I know how this game goes.
This is a new one! “Computers will never be able to sort lists of words by arbitrary keys.”
Does it require quantum microtubules in the incomprehensibly complex neuron to leverage uncomputable mental powers that can defy Gödel’s proof or something?
Yeah, wouldn’t it be great if there was some way to not have a nuclear war or build AI?
If anyone can think of one, they’ll have my full support.
I think this is probably right. When all hope is gone, try just telling people the truth and see what happens. I don’t expect it will work, I don’t expect Eliezer expects it to work, but it may be our last chance to stop it.
And it does seem to have got a bit of traction. A very non-technical friend just sent me the link, on the basis that she knows “I’ve always been a bit worried about that sort of thing.”
Hello Rufus! Welcome to Less Wrong!
This is great. Strong upvote!
Are you claiming that a physically plausible superintelligence couldn’t infer the physical laws from a video, or that AIXI couldn’t?
Those seem to be different claims and I wonder which of the two you’re aiming at?