philip_b

Karma: 910

philip_b Nov 15, 2022, 7:39 PM
1 point
in reply to: Pausecafe’s comment on: Help Me Refactor Myself I am Lost
I’ve just read your previous two posts. I, too, will be interested to read another post of yours.

philip_b Nov 13, 2022, 10:37 PM
47 points
14
on: The Alignment Community Is Culturally Broken
I am (was) an X% researcher, where X<Y. I wish I had given up on AI safety earlier. I suspect it would’ve been better for me if AI safety resources explicitly said things like “if you’re less than Y, don’t even try”, although I’m not sure if I would’ve believed them. Now, I’m glad that I’m not trying to do AI safety anymore and instead I just work at a well paying relaxed job doing practical machine learning. So, I think pushing too many EAs into AI safety will lead to those EAs suffering much more, which happened to me, so I don’t want that to happen and I don’t want the AI Alignment community to stop saying “You should stay if and only if you’re better than Y”.

Actually, I wish there were more selfish-oriented resources for AI Alignment. Like, with normal universities and jobs, people analyze how to get into them, have a fulfilling career, earn good money, not burn out, etc. As a result, people can read this and properly analyze if it makes sense for them to try to get into jobs or universities for their own food. But with a career in AI safety, this is not the case. All the resources look out not only for the reader, but also for the whole EA project. I think this can easily burn people.

philip_b Nov 13, 2022, 2:08 PM
3 points
in reply to: philh’s comment on: Consider Taking Zinc Every Time You Travel
I still take these zinc lozenges when I suspect that I might fall with a common cold. I feel like they help me somewhat. Maybe my colds have been shorter since I’ve started taking Zinc but I’m not sure. I haven’t been tracking any data explicitly. I guess I’m gonna be taking Zinc for common cold as long as I don’t get further evidence about it not working.

philip_b Oct 25, 2022, 9:47 PM
1 point
0
on: Writing Russian and Ukrainian words in Latin script
Perhaps you can just use the international phonetic alphabet?

philip_b Oct 3, 2022, 4:36 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Baby Monitor with Delay
I don’t know how to square that with the idea that one shouldn’t ignore their crying kids. I have no idea how kids’ crying at night works. Is it possible that a parent should just suck it up and come and comfort the baby every time they cry? Maybe you can comfort her since she’s crying but not give her the reward of soothing her until she falls asleep? Is it possible that she cries at night because she’s doesn’t get enough cuddles during the day or because the room looks scary or something like that? I don’t know enough about the situation and I don’t have any kids of my own and don’t have any practical experience of dealing with them. Maybe you can be there with her in her sleeping room when she cries but still make it so that she learns to self-soothe and put herself to sleep? Like, idk, stay with her but don’t rock her to sleep or something like that.

philip_b Oct 3, 2022, 3:22 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Baby Monitor with Delay
Ok, I don’t know more than that about addressing children’s crying. I just thought that ignoring it is (almost always?) bad but I’m not sure.

philip_b Oct 3, 2022, 2:54 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Baby Monitor with Delay

I’m not sure how to read this; where are you on the continuum from “I heard it’s bad” to “I read all the papers and came to a deep considered view”?

I also thought so when I read your post. I’m at the “The book ‘The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog’ says so” point. The book is not about sleep in particular, it’s about psychological trauma in childhood, especially the one obtained from neglect.

Also, I think this might cause the child to develop either an avoidant attachment style (there’s no point in crying or asking others for help, they won’t come anyway).

philip_b Sep 16, 2022, 11:35 AM
2 points
0
on: How do I find tutors for obscure skills/subjects (i.e. fermi estimation tutors)
I also don’t know how to find tutors for narrow subjects. For instance, I would like a little bit of tutoring about
- panoptic segmentation
- dependent types
but I don’t know how to find one.

philip_b Aug 20, 2022, 10:23 PM
2 points
0
on: Encultured AI Pre-planning, Part 2: Providing a Service
The link to the next post in this post is broken.

philip_b Aug 20, 2022, 10:14 PM
2 points
0
on: Announcing Encultured AI: Building a Video Game
Is this the beginning of Friendship is Optimal?

philip_b Aug 7, 2022, 1:12 PM
7 points
0
on: Dwarves & D.Sci: Data Fortress
What role do I, the data scientist dwarf, have?

philip_b Jul 26, 2022, 12:26 AM
1 point
0
AF
on: Unifying Bargaining Notions (1/2)
In the first part, the two respective properties of the two definitions of chaaness you mentioned apply after rescaling and shifting of utility functions is done, right? I.e., the properties actually say “after rescaling and shifting the points, if you move the Pareto-frontier points for a player up, they should get more utility” and “untaken options are irrelevant if you don’t change the scale after removing them”. Now, I don’t see why these properties are interesting and what they correspond to in real life. In contrast, if they applied before rescaling and shifting, then they would be quite interesting. So, can you please elaborate why they are interesting as they are and what they actually mean as they are?

philip_b Jul 6, 2022, 5:24 PM
18 points
10
on: Carrying the Torch: A Response to Anna Salamon by the Guild of the Rose
I just want to say that your described solution to “Problem 1: Differentiating effective interventions from unfalsifiable woo” suggests to me that your curriculum would be mostly useless for me, and maybe for many other people as well, because it won’t go deep enough. I think either I’ve already gotten everything I can get from shallow interventions “like better nutrition, using your speaking voice more effectively, improving your personal financial organization, emergency preparedness, and implementing a knowledge management system”, or they were never that good in the first place. Personally, I am focusing on psychotherapy right now. It’s unfortunate that it consists mostly of borderline-unfalsifiable woo but that’s all we’ve got.

philip_b Jun 4, 2022, 11:58 AM
2 points
on: D&D.Sci June 2022: A Goddess Tried To Reincarnate Me Into A Fantasy World, But I Insisted On Using Data Science To Select An Optimal Combination Of Cheat Skills!
My solution:

I choose Radiant Splendor and Enlightenment simply because out of all champions with personality like mine, it had the highest win frequency. And it even has a solid number of samples − 244. Basically, I narrowed down the dataset to only rows with the same personality like mine. Perhaps I could get some more info from other rows, but that would require spending more time.

philip_b Jun 4, 2022, 11:03 AM
3 points
on: D&D.Sci June 2022: A Goddess Tried To Reincarnate Me Into A Fantasy World, But I Insisted On Using Data Science To Select An Optimal Combination Of Cheat Skills!
Does the order of the two skills matter? Of course, I can check this from data, but perhaps you’d be willing to just answer this straight away so that I won’t have to.

philip_b Jun 4, 2022, 10:36 AM
1 point
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Another Calming Example
I am glad to hear that.

philip_b Jun 4, 2022, 10:14 AM
3 points
on: D&D.Sci June 2022: A Goddess Tried To Reincarnate Me Into A Fantasy World, But I Insisted On Using Data Science To Select An Optimal Combination Of Cheat Skills!
Can I choose to get a god partner?

philip_b Jun 4, 2022, 10:05 AM
3 points
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Another Calming Example

Not clear to me why we should think of these as different. We care about the effect on the kid, right?

I suppose that when I think about the situation when you only pretend not to understand them, I imagine something like a strict dad telling his son “Pull yourself together, you wimp!”. While if you actually don’t understand them, then I imagine a cooperative conversation between the two of you, where you not understanding them while they are crying is an obstacle both of you would like to overcome.

philip_b Jun 3, 2022, 9:15 PM
5 points
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Another Calming Example

Would you feel differently if it was actually the case that I was bad at understanding kids who are currently crying?

Yes, of course.

So the approach I’ve generally taken is to talk to kids and help them solve the problems they say they have. This generally seems to work pretty well?

This sounds good! However, another thing that matters is whether you give off a “you’re only allowed to give respectable reasons for your feelings” vibe.

Btw, I wanna say that I enjoy reading your parenting posts a lot.

philip_b Jun 3, 2022, 11:48 AM
5 points
on: Another Calming Example
I don’t like this. It looks like you pressured the kid to stop crying and just hide their feelings (“I told them that I couldn’t understand and asked if they could speak normally”).

Also, it seems unlikely to me that the kid’s real reason for getting upset was that “they were worried the pasta was going to run out and they would still be hungry after dinner”. But still, I observe that this is what the kid said. From this I infer that either you, in this situation, or the kid’s social environment, before this situation, pressured the kid into generating fake but socially acceptable explanations of their feelings. I don’t like it that people often have to generate fake but socially acceptable explanations of their feelings, even with close people. At least, if you’re a very close person to this kid who acts as his guardian.