mruwnik

Karma: 422

mruwnik 24 Dec 2024 22:21 UTC
4 points
3
in reply to: tup99’s comment on: When Is Insurance Worth It?
Wealth not equaling happiness works both ways. It’s the idea of losing wealth that’s driving sleep away. In this case, the goal of buying insurance is to minimize the risk of losing wealth. The real thing that’s stopping you sleep is not whether you have insurance or not, it’s how likely it is that something bad happens, which will cost more than you’re comfortable losing. Having insurance is just one of the ways to minimize that—the problem is stress stemming from uncertainty, not whether you’ve bought an insurance policy.
The list of misunderstandings is a bit tongue in cheek (at least that’s how I read it). So it’s not so much disdainful of people’s emotions, as much as it’s pointing out that whether you have insurance is not the right thing to worry about—it’s much more fruitful to try to work out the probabilities of various bad things then calculate how much you should be willing to pay to lower that risk. It’s about viewing the world through the lens of probability and deciding these things on the basis of expected value. Rather than have sleepless nights, just shut up and multiply (this is a quote, not an attack). Even if you’re very risk averse, you should be able to just plug that into the equation and come up with some maximum insurance cost above which it’s not worth buying it. Then you just buy it (or not) and sleep the sleep of the just. The point is to actually investigate it and put some numbers on it, rather than live in stress. This is why it’s a mathematical decision with a correct answer. Though the correct answer, of course, will be subjective and depend on your utility function. It’s still a mathematical decision.
Spock is an interesting example to use, in how he’s very much not rational. Here’s a lot more on that topic.

mruwnik 22 Dec 2024 14:18 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: jasoncrawford’s comment on: Biological risk from the mirror world
It’s probably not that large a risk though? I doubt any alien microbes would be that much of a problem to us. It seems unlikely that they would happen to use exactly the same biochemistry as we do, which makes it harder for them to infect/digest us. Chirality is just one of the multitudes of ways in which earth’s biosphere is “unique”. It’s been a while since I was knowledgeable about any of this, but a quick o1 query seems to point in the same direction. Worth going through quarantine, just in case, of course. Though that works on earth pathogens which tend to quickly die off without hosts to infect, which very well might not hold true for more interesting environments.
Peter Watt’s Rifters series goes a bit into this topic. This is by no means evidence either way, but I just wanted to let more people know about it.

mruwnik 26 Aug 2024 13:59 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Michael Roe’s comment on: Liability regimes for AI
A bit of nitpicking: the basic Open Source deal is not that you can do what you want with the product. It’s that the source code should be available. The whole point of introducing open source as an idea was to allow coorporations etc. to give access to their source code without worrying so much about people doing what you’re describing. Deleting a “don’t do this bad thing” can be prosecuted as copyright infringement (if the whole license gets removed). This is what copyleft was invented for—to subvert copyright laws by using them to force companies to publish their code.
There are licenses like MIT which do what you’re describing. Others are less permissive, and e.g. only allow you to use the code in non-commercial projects, or stipulate that you have to send any fixes back to the original developer if you’re planning on distributing it. The GPL is a fun one, which requires any code that is derivative of it to also be open sourced.
Also, Open Source can very much be a source of liability, e.g. the SCO v. IBM case which was trying to get people to pay for linux (patent trolls being what they are) or Oracle vs Google, where Oracle (arguably also patent trolls) wanted Google to pay billions for use of the Java API (this ended up in the supreme court).

mruwnik 29 Apr 2024 10:30 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: The Inner Ring by C. S. Lewis
It’s not that the elite groups are good or bad, it’s the desire to be in an elite group that leads to bad outcomes. Like how the root of all evil is the love of money, where money in itself isn’t bad, it’s the desire to possess it that is. Mainly because you start to focus on the means rather than the ends, and so end up in places you wouldn’t have wanted to end up in originally.
It’s about status. Being in with the cool kids etc. Elite groups aren’t inherently good or bad—they’re usually just those who are better at whatever is valued, or at least better at signaling that they are better at whatever is valued, depending on the group phase (the classic description being geeks, mops and sociopaths or Scott Alexander’s version). For many people, status is one of the most important things there are. And not just for instrumental reasons, but on a deep terminal level. You can argue that it’s an evolutionary instrumental goal, but for them status is a value in and of itself. From what I’ve read of your comments around here, I’m assuming that’s not true of you, especially as your last paragraph comes to the same conclusion as Lewis does.
People for whom status is so important are easy to manipulate by promising them status. They’re willing to sacrifice other values for status gains. Basically Moloch and moral mazes on a personal level. So the best case scenario of chasing status just for the sake of status is that you spend lots of resources chasing a mirage, as there’s always another group with higher status that you haven’t yet joined. Unfortunately, many such status seekers want to join groups that tend towards immoral/illegal/etc. actions. So to join them, you have to jeopardize yourself. The Russian Kompromat system is a good example of how this works in practice. Or blackmail schemes, where you get the target to do worse and worse things to avoid leaking the previous action. Most inner circles are not that blatant, of course. The problem is that if you value joining such inner circles more than your other values, then there will probably be points where you have to choose between the two, and too many people prefer to sacrifice their other values on Moloch’s alter.

mruwnik 13 Apr 2024 18:49 UTC
8 points
2
in reply to: Stephen McAleese’s comment on: LLMs for Alignment Research: a safety priority?
It’s not just from https://aisafety.info/. It also uses Arbital, any posts from the alignment forum, LW, EA forum that seem relevant and have a minimum karma, a bunch of arXiv papers, and a couple of other sources. This is a a relatively up to date list of the sources used (it also contains the actual data).

mruwnik 3 Jan 2024 11:49 UTC
5 points
0
on: Apologizing is a Core Rationalist Skill
Another, related Machiavellian tactic is, when starting a relationship that you suspect will be highly valuable to you, is to have an argument with them as soon as possible, and then to patch things up with a (sincere!) apology. I’m not suggesting to go out of your way to start a quarrel, more that it’s both a valuable data point as to how they handle problems (as most relationships will have patchy moments) and it’s also a good signal to them that you value them highly enough to go through a proper apology.

mruwnik 22 Dec 2023 13:42 UTC
7 points
0
in reply to: Cleo Nardo’s comment on: AI Safety Chatbot
1. gpt-3.5-turbo for now
2. that’s also being tried
What links here?
- Stephen McAleese's comment on LLMs for Alignment Research: a safety priority? by abramdemski (5 Apr 2024 19:08 UTC; 2 points)

mruwnik 17 Oct 2023 12:42 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Adrià Garriga-alonso’s comment on: The Hidden Perils of Hydrogen
They are perils of assuming that hydrogen is the future, or perils of basing your energy needs on it—i.e. the peril is not in the hydrogen, it’s in making plans involving it

mruwnik 29 Sep 2023 14:17 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: EA Vegan Advocacy is not truthseeking, and it’s everyone’s problem
That’s actually what got me to stop eating (or at least buying) meat

mruwnik 28 Sep 2023 12:17 UTC
4 points
1
in reply to: teageegeepea’s comment on: The Talk: a brief explanation of sexual dimorphism
Somatic cells are generally dead ends evolutionary. Your toe cells aren’t going to do much reproducing. Also, mitochondial (or in general organellar) DNA is split between the actual mitochondria and the cells containing them. Biology is fun!
The argument for mitochondria is that they cause the cell environment to be more toxic (what with them being the cell’s powerhouse). This in turn is going to provide a lot of selection pressure. In the same way e.g. global warming is causing a lot of selection pressure.
Runaway sexual selection has limits. This is also sort of the point. If you can carry around massive breasts, tails, noses or whatever and still be very prosperous, that means you’re good. Where “prosper” can mean running away from lions if you’re an antelope, or be the top of the village pecking order if you’re a human. Like a short pro basketball player. If they’re short, but still at a pro level, that’s someone you want on your team. This is known as the handicap principle, and can be explained via signaling mechanisms.

mruwnik 19 Sep 2023 4:50 UTC
3 points
2
in reply to: Daniel Kokotajlo’s comment on: The Talk: a brief explanation of sexual dimorphism
The number of generations controls how long your experiment lasts. The longer (or more generations), the more drift you have, so the more likely for a given gene (or in this case—genders number) to take over. This effect will be weaker in larger populations, but unless you have an infinite population, given enough time (or generations), you’ll end up with the 2 sexes (except for fungi, of course, as always). Eukaryotes first appeared 2.2 billion years ago. For comparison, the Cambrian explosion, with the first complex life, was only ~500 million years ago. That’s a lot of time (or generations) for things to stabilize.
There are multiple mating types around. Mammals have the XY/XX chromosome thing going. Birds have a different chromosome set (denoted as ZW/ZZ). Some families use egg temperature to determine sex. Some fish have one male, and if it disappears, the next ranking individual becomes the male. Insects also have totally different mechanisms. But there are usually only the two sexes (apart from fungi), probably for the efficiency reasons outlined in the OP.

mruwnik 19 Sep 2023 0:49 UTC
14 points
0
on: Where might I direct promising-to-me researchers to apply for alignment jobs/grants?
There is a Stampy answer to that which should stay up to date here.

mruwnik 19 Sep 2023 0:44 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: brendan.furneaux’s comment on: The Talk: a brief explanation of sexual dimorphism
My understanding is pretty much what you said—when the going is good, then go asexual (e.g. strawberry runners, grasses or Asian knotweed), but also try for seeds, There are a couple of species of plants that have lost the ability for sexual reproduction, but I can’t recall them right now. That being said, various plants used by humans can be pretty much exclusively reproduced asexually and so have lost the ability for sexual reproduction, specifically because they have very stable environments. The obvious examples are seedless fruits (bananas, grapes), but ginger and garlic are interesting plants that have been propagated from cuttings or bulbs for thousands of years and so lost the ability to produce seeds (with the normal caveats).
Aphids are also an interesting example, where the previous year’s eggs hatch in the spring as females, which then clone themselves as fast as possible—when there’s too many of them they will create clones with wings, and when autumn comes around, they will create male clones to then go through the normal sexual reproductive route. Which is also an example of the stable/unstable environment issues you mentioned.

mruwnik 18 Sep 2023 19:03 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Nathaniel Monson’s comment on: The Talk: a brief explanation of sexual dimorphism
This depends on the size and distances involved, but it’s a good intuition. You need a mechanism to generate the pressure differentials, which can be an issue in very small organisms, which can be an issue.
Small and sedentary organisms tend to use chemical gradients (i.e. smell), but anything bigger than a mouse (and quite a few smaller things) usually has some kind of sound signals, which are really good for quick notifications in a radius around you, regardless of the light level (so you can pretty much always use it). Also, depending on the medium, sound can travel really far—like whales which communicate with each other over thousands of miles, or elephants stomping to communicate with other elephants 20 miles away.

mruwnik 18 Sep 2023 18:46 UTC
12 points
6
on: The Talk: a brief explanation of sexual dimorphism
organisms with mitochondria always use sexual reproduction
Or at least their ancestors did. You mention Bdelloidea in a comment, which are one of the inevitable exceptions (as you mention in the introduction, which I very appreciate, as “everything in biology has exceptions” is something I often find myself saying), but they are descended from eucaryotes which did have mitochondria.
The opposite seems true, though—true sexual reproduction seems to be exclusively by eukaryotes. So you could also say that sex makes mitochondria necessary. There seem to be a couple of good jokes there...
One other pedantic note to add to this generally excellent article is that non-eukaryotic organisms also have methods to mix their genes, what with bacterial conjugation or viral recombination, without the dimorphism.

mruwnik 18 Sep 2023 17:58 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Bezzi’s comment on: Is AI Safety dropping the ball on privacy?
It requires you to actively manage long lived sessions which would otherwise be handled by the site you’re using. You can often get back to where you were by just logging in again, but there are many places (especially for travel or official places) where that pretty much resets the whole flow.
There are also a lot more popups, captchas and other hoops to jump through when you don’t have a cookies trail.
The average user is lazy and doesn’t think about these things, so the web as a whole is moving in the direction of making things easier (but not simpler). This is usually viewed as a good thing by those who then only need to click a single button. Though it’s at the cost of those who want to have more control.
It might not be inconvenient to you, especially as it’s your basic flow. It’s inconvenient for me, but worth the cost, but basically unusable for most of the people I know (compared to the default flow).

mruwnik 5 Sep 2023 16:25 UTC
3 points
2
in reply to: AnthonyC’s comment on: The purpose of the (Mosaic) law
I thought all of these were obvious and well known. But yes, all of these are things I was pointing at.

mruwnik 3 Sep 2023 16:40 UTC
1 point
−2
on: Assume Bad Faith
there is “something else” going on besides both parties just wanting to get the right answer
There are also different priors. While in general you might very well be right (or at least this post makes a lot of sense to me), I often have conversations where I’m pretty sure both my interlocutor and I am discussing things in good faith, but where we still can’t agree on pretty basic things (usually about religion).

mruwnik 2 Sep 2023 10:53 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Kerrigan’s comment on: AGI Safety FAQ / all-dumb-questions-allowed thread
I’m assuming you’re not asking about the mechanism (i.e. natural selection + mutations)? A trite answer would be something like “the same way it created wings, mating dances, exploding beetles, and parasites requiring multiple hosts”.
Thinking about the meaning of life might be a spandrel, but a quick consideration of it comes up with various evo-psych style reasons why it’s actually very useful, e.g. it can propel people to greatness, which massively can increase their genetic fitness. Fitness is an interesting thing, in that it can be very non-obvious. Everything is a trade-off, where the only goal is for your genes to propagate. So if thinking about the meaning of life will get your genes spread more (e.g. because you decide that your children have inherit meaning, because you become a high status philosopher and your sister can marry well, because it’s a social sign that you have enough resources to waste them on fruitless pondering) then it’s worth having around.

mruwnik 2 Sep 2023 10:36 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Kerrigan’s comment on: AGI Safety FAQ / all-dumb-questions-allowed thread
Frankenstein is a tale about misalignment. Asimov wrote a whole book about it. Vernor Vinge also writes about it. People have been trying to get their children to behave in certain ways for ever. But before LW the alignment problem was just the domain of SF.
20 years ago the alignment problem wasn’t a thing, so much that MIRI started out as an org to create a Friendly AI.