player_03

• player_03Oct 6, 2013, 3:59 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: pewpewlasergun’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Oc­to­ber 2013

  Having just listened to much of the Ethical Injunctions sequence (as a podcast courtesy of George Thomas), I’m not so sure about this one. There are reasons for serious, competent people to follow ethical rules, even when they need to get things done in the real world.

  Ethics aren’t quite the same as tradition and protocol, but even so, sometimes all three of those things exist for good reasons.

• player_03Sep 13, 2013, 2:06 AM

  6 points

  in reply to: pslunch’s comment on: The ge­nie knows, but doesn’t care

  Agreed.

  ---

  Though actually, Eliezer used similar phrasing regarding Richard Loosemore and got downvoted for it (not just by me). Admittedly, “persistent troll” is less extreme than “permanent idiot,” but even so, the statement could be phrased to be more useful.

  I’d suggest, “We’ve presented similar arguments to [person] already, and [he or she] remained unconvinced. Ponder carefully before deciding to spend much time arguing with [him or her].”

  Not only is it less offensive this way, it does a better job of explaining itself. (Note: the “ponder carefully” section is quoting Eliezer; that part of his post was fine.)

• player_03Sep 12, 2013, 7:02 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The ge­nie knows, but doesn’t care

  You and I are both bound by the terms of a scenario that someone else has set here.

  Ok, if you want to pass the buck, I won’t stop you. But this other person’s scenario still has a faulty premise. I’ll take it up with them if you like; just point out where they state that the goal code starts out working correctly.

  To summarize my complaint, it’s not very useful to discuss an AI with a “sincere” goal of X, because the difficulty comes from giving the AI that goal in the first place.

  What you did was consider some other possibilities, such as those in which the AI is actually not being sincere. Nothing wrong with considering those, but that would be a story for another day.

  As I see it, your (adopted) scenario is far less likely than other scenario(s), so in a sense that one is the “story for another day.” Specifically, a day when we’ve solved the “sincere goal” issue.

• player_03Sep 11, 2013, 2:22 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The ge­nie knows, but doesn’t care

  I didn’t mean to ignore your argument; I just didn’t get around to it. As I said, there were a lot of things I wanted to respond to. (In fact, this post was going to be longer, but I decided to focus on your primary argument.)

  Your story:

  This hypothetical AI will say “I have a goal, and my goal is to get a certain class of results, X, in the real world.” [...] And we say “Hey, no problem: looks like your goal code is totally consistent with that verbal description of the desired class of results.” Everything is swell up to this point.

  My version:

  The AI is lying. Or possibly it isn’t very smart yet, so it’s bad at describing its goal. Or it’s oversimplifying, because the programmers told it to, because otherwise the goal description would take days. And the goal code itself is too complicated for the programmers to fully understand. In any case, everything is not swell.

  Your story:

  Then one day the AI says “Okay now, today my goalX code says I should do this…” and it describes an action that is VIOLENTLY inconsistent with the previously described class of results, X. This action violates every one of the features of the class that were previously given.

  My version:

  The AI’s goal was never really X. It was actually Z. The AI’s actions perfectly coincide with Z.

  In the rest of the scenario you described, I agree that the AI’s behavior is pretty incoherent, if its goal is X. But if it’s really aiming for Z, then its behavior is perfectly, terrifyingly coherent.

  And your “obvious” fail-safe isn’t going to help. The AI is smarter than us. If it wants Z, and a fail-safe prevents it from getting Z, it will find a way around that fail-safe.

  I know, your premise is that X really is the AI’s true goal. But that’s my sticking point.

  Making it actually have the goal X, before it starts self-modifying, is far from easy. You can’t just skip over that step and assume it as your premise.

• player_03Sep 10, 2013, 8:41 AM

  9 points

  in reply to: Rob Bensinger’s comment on: The ge­nie knows, but doesn’t care

  Oh, yeah, I found that myself eventually.

  Anyway, I went and read the the majority of that discussion (well, the parts between Richard and Rob). Here’s my summary:

  Richard:

  I think that what is happening in this discussion [...] is a misunderstanding. [...]

  [Rob responds]

  Richard:

  You completely miss the point that I was trying to make. [...]

  [Rob responds]

  Richard:

  You are talking around the issue I raised. [...] There is a gigantic elephant in the middle of this room, but your back is turned to it. [...]

  [Rob responds]

  Richard:

  [...] But each time I explain my real complaint, you ignore it and respond as if I did not say anything about that issue. Can you address my particular complaint, and not that other distraction?

  [Rob responds]

  Richard:

  [...] So far, nobody (neither Rob nor anyone else at LW or elsewhere) will actually answer that question. [...]

  [Rob responds]

  Richard:

  Once again, I am staggered and astonished by the resilience with which you avoid talking about the core issue, and instead return to the red herring that I keep trying to steer you away from. [...]

  Rob:

  Alright. You say I’ve been dancing around your “core” point. I think I’ve addressed your concerns quite directly, [...] To prevent yet another suggestion that I haven’t addressed the “core”, I’ll respond to everything you wrote above. [...]

  Richard:

  Rob, it happened again. [...]

  I snipped a lot of things there. I found lots of other points I wanted to emphasize, and plenty of things I wanted to argue against. But those aren’t the point.

  ---

  Richard, this next part is directed at you.

  You know what I didn’t find?

  I didn’t find any posts where you made a particular effort to address the core of Rob’s argument. It was always about your argument. Rob was always the one missing the point.

  Sure, it took Rob long enough to focus on finding the core of your position, but he got there eventually. And what happened next? You declared that he was still missing the point, posted a condensed version of the same argument, and posted here that your position “withstands all the attacks against it.”

  You didn’t even wait for him to respond. You certainly didn’t quote him and respond to the things he said. You gave no obvious indication that you were taking his arguments seriously.

  As far as I’m concerned, this is a cardinal sin.

  ---

  I think I am explaining the point with such long explanations that I am causing you to miss the point.

  How about this alternate hypothesis? Your explanations are fine. Rob understands what you’re saying. He just doesn’t agree.

  Perhaps you need to take a break from repeating yourself and make sure you understand Rob’s argument.

  (P.S. Eliezer’s ad hominem is still wrong. You may be making a mistake, but I’m confident you can fix it, the tone of this post notwithstanding.)

• player_03Sep 10, 2013, 7:21 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The ge­nie knows, but doesn’t care

  Link to the nailed-down version of the argument?

• player_03Sep 10, 2013, 6:22 AM

  7 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The ge­nie knows, but doesn’t care

  I posted elsewhere that this post made me think you’re anthropomorphizing; here’s my attempt to explain why.

  egregiously incoherent behavior in ONE domain (e.g., the Dopamine Drip scenario)

  the craziness of its own behavior (vis-a-vis the Dopamine Drip idea)

  if an AI cannot even understand that “Make humans happy” implies that humans get some say in the matter

  Ok, so let’s say the AI can parse natural language, and we tell it, “Make humans happy.” What happens? Well, it parses the instruction and decides to implement a Dopamine Drip setup.

  As FeepingCreature pointed out, that solution would in fact make people happy; it’s hardly inconsistent or crazy. The AI could certainly predict that people wouldn’t approve, but it would still go ahead. To paraphrase the article, the AI simply doesn’t care about your quibbles and concerns.

  For instance:

  people might consider happiness to be something that they do not actually want too much of

  Yes, but the AI was told, “make humans happy.” Not, “give humans what they actually want.”

  people might be allowed to be uncertain or changeable in their attitude to happiness

  Yes, but the AI was told, “make humans happy.” Not, “allow humans to figure things out for themselves.”

  subtleties implicit in that massive fraction of human literature that is devoted to the contradictions buried in our notions of human happiness

  Yes, but blah blah blah.

  ---

  Actually, that last one makes a point that you probably should have focused on more. Let’s reconfigure the AI in light of this.

  The revised AI doesn’t just have natural language parsing; it’s read all available literature and constructed for itself a detailed and hopefully accurate picture of what people tend to mean by words (especially words like “happy”). And as a bonus, it’s done this without turning the Earth into computronium!

  This certainly seems better than the “literal genie” version. And this time we’ll be clever enough to tell it, “give humans what they actually want.” What does this version do?

  My answer: who knows? We’ve given it a deliberately vague goal statement (even more vague than the last one), we’ve given it lots of admittedly contradictory literature, and we’ve given it plenty of time to self-modify before giving it the goal of self-modifying to be Friendly.

  Maybe it’ll still go for the Dopamine Drip scenario, only for more subtle reasons. Maybe it’s removed the code that makes it follow commands, so the only thing it does is add the quote “give humans what they actually want” to its literature database.

  As I said, who knows?

  ---

  Now to wrap up:

  You say things like “‘Make humans happy’ implies that...” and “subtleties implicit in...” You seem to think these implications are simple, but they really aren’t. They really, really aren’t.

  This is why I say you’re anthropomorphizing. You’re not actually considering the full details of these “obvious” implications. You’re just putting yourself in the AI’s place, asking yourself what you would do, and then assuming that the AI would do the same.

• player_03Sep 10, 2013, 4:54 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The ge­nie knows, but doesn’t care

  I did see the insult, but Eliezer (quite rightly) got plenty of downvotes for it. I’m pretty sure that’s not the reason you’re being rated down.

  I myself gave you a downvote because I got a strong impression that you were anthropomorphizing. Note that I did so before reading Eliezer’s comment.

  I certainly should have explained my reasons after voting, but I was busy and the downvote button seemed convenient. Sorry about that. I’ll get started on a detailed response now.

• player_03Sep 7, 2013, 8:07 AM

  16 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The ge­nie knows, but doesn’t care

  I want to upvote this for the link to further discussion, but I also want to downvote it for the passive-aggressive jab at LW users.

  No vote.

• player_03Aug 11, 2013, 12:05 AM

  21 points

  in reply to: player_03’s comment on: MIRI’s 2013 Sum­mer Match­ing Challenge

  I’ve donated a second $1000.

• player_03Jul 26, 2013, 4:46 PM

  30 points

  on: MIRI’s 2013 Sum­mer Match­ing Challenge

  I donated $1000 and then went and bought Facing the Intelligence Explosion for the bare minimum price. (Just wanted to put that out there.)

  I’ve also left myself a reminder to consider another donation a few days before this runs out. It’ll depend on my financial situation, but I should be able to manage it.

• player_03Jun 2, 2013, 6:41 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: Maelin’s comment on: Re­duc­tion­ism se­quence now available in au­dio format

  A podcast entry is included for that one, but it just directs you to read the original article.

  I was going to link you one of the other podcasts (which all provide samples), but then I realized you might be asking why this specific podcast doesn’t have one.

• player_03Apr 13, 2013, 4:46 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: MugaSofer’s comment on: The Lifes­pan Dilemma

  Ok, yeah, in that case my response is to take as many deals as Omega offers.

  AdeleneDawner and gwern provide a way to make the idea more palatable—assume MWI. That is, assume there will be one “alive” branch and a bunch of “dead” branches. That way, your utility payoff is guaranteed. (Ignoring the grief of those around you in all the “dead” branches.)

  Without that interpretation, the idea becomes scarier, but the math still comes down firmly on the side of accepting all the offers. It certainly feels like a bad idea to accept that probability of death, no matter what the math says, but as far as I can tell that’s scope insensitivity talking.

  With that in mind, my only remaining objection is the “we can do better than that” argument presented above. My feeling is, why not use a few of those 10^10,000,000,000 years to figure out a way to live even longer? Omega won’t allow it? Ok, so I don’t want to get involved with Omega in the first place; it’s not worth losing my (admittedly slim) chances at actual immortality. Too late for that? Fine, then I’ll sit down, shut up, and multiply.

• player_03Apr 12, 2013, 11:37 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: MugaSofer’s comment on: The Lifes­pan Dilemma

  One-in-a-million is just an estimate. Immortality is a tough proposition, but the singularity might make it happen. The important part is that it isn’t completely implausible.

  I’m not sure what you mean, otherwise.

  Are you suggesting that Omega takes away any chance of achieving immortality even before making the offer? In that case, Omega’s a jerk, but I’ll shut up and multiply.

  Or are you saying that 10^10,000,000,000 years could be used for other high-utility projects, like making simulated universes full of generally happy people? Immortality would allow even more time for that.

• player_03 12 Apr 2013 22:26 UTC

  0 points

  on: The Lifes­pan Dilemma

  Summary of this retracted post:

  Omega isn’t offering an extended lifespan; it’s offering an 80% chance of guaranteed death plus a 20% chance of guaranteed death. Before this offer was made, actual immortality was on the table, with maybe a one-in-a-million chance.

• player_03 8 Apr 2013 6:25 UTC

  21 points

  on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes April 2013

  When I was a Christian, and when I began this intense period of study which eventually led to my atheism, my goal, my one and only goal, was to find the best evidence and argument I could find that would lead people to the truth of Jesus Christ. That was a huge mistake. As a skeptic now, my goal is very similar—it just stops short. My goal is to find the best evidence and argument, period. Not the best evidence and argument that leads to a preconceived conclusion. The best evidence and argument, period, and go wherever the evidence leads.

  --Matt Dillahunty

• player_03 22 Feb 2013 23:45 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: MichaelHoward’s comment on: Epi­logue: Atone­ment (8/​8)

  Sorry I’m late… is no-one curious given the age of the universe why the 3 races are so close technologically?

  Sorry I’m late in replying to this, but I’d guess the answer is that this is “the past’s future.” He would not have been able to tell this story with one species being that advanced, so he postulated a universe in which such a species doesn’t exist (or at least isn’t nearby).

  Your in-universe explanations work as well, of course.

• player_03 22 Feb 2013 23:33 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Hul-Gil’s comment on: Epi­logue: Atone­ment (8/​8)

  Perhaps the fact that it’s the “traditional and irrational” ending is the reason Eliezer went with it as the “real” one. (Note that he didn’t actually label them as “good” and “bad” endings.)

• player_03 4 Nov 2012 0:38 UTC

  15 points

  in reply to: Anja’s comment on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  I assumed the same, based on the definition of “god” as “supernatural” and the definition of “supernatural” as “involving ontologically basic mental entities.”

  (Oh, and for anyone who hasn’t read the relevant post, the survey is quoting this.)

• player_03 4 Mar 2012 0:46 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes March 2012

  I could be interpreting it entirely wrong, but I’d guess this is the list Cochran had in mind:

  •