Tapatakt

Karma: 993

Tapatakt May 2, 2025, 2:46 PM
8 points
0
on: LDT (and everything else) can be irrational
Against $9 rock, X always chooses $1. Consider the problem “symmetrical ultimatum game against X”. By symmetry, X on average can get at most $5. But $9 rock always gets $9. So $9 rock is more rational than X.
I don’t like the implied requirement “to be rational you must play at least as good as the opponent” instead of “to be rational you must play at least as good as any other agent in your place”. $9 rock gets $0 if it plays against $9 rock.
(No objection to overall no-free-lunch conclusion, though)

Tapatakt Apr 12, 2025, 11:35 AM
1 point
0
in reply to: Martín Soto’s comment on: Weird Random Newcomb Problem
(Or maybe the right way to think about this is: it will have a tiny but non-zero effect, because you are one of the |P| programs, but since |P| is huge, that is ~0.)
No effect. I meant that programmer has to write $b$ from $P$ , not that $b$ is added to $P$ . Probably I should change the phrasing to make it clearer.
But the intuition that you were expressing in Question 2 (“p2 is better than p1 because it scores better”) isn’t compatible with “caring equally about all programs”. Instead, it sounds as if you positively want to score better than other programs, that is, maximize your score and minimize theirs!
No, the utility here is just the amount of money $b$ gets, whatever program it is. $a$ doesn’t get any money, it just determines what will be in the first box.

Tapatakt Apr 12, 2025, 11:25 AM
2 points
1
in reply to: JBlack’s comment on: Weird Random Newcomb Problem
As a function of M, |P| is very likely to be exponential and so it will take O(M) symbols to specify a member of P.
O-ops, I didn’t think about it, thanks! Maybe it would be better to change it so input is “a=b” or “a!=b”, and $a$ always gets “a=b”.
That aside, why are you assuming that program b “wants” anything? Essentially all of P won’t be programs that have any sort of “want”. If it is a precondition of the problem that b is such a program, what selection procedure is assumed between those that do “want” money from this scenario? Note that being selected for running is also a precondition for getting any money at all, so this selection procedure is critically important—far more so than anything the program might output!
Programmer who wrote $b$ decided that it should be consequentialist agent who wants to get money. (Or, if this program is actually, $a$ , it wants to maximize the payment for $b$ just because such a program was chosen by Omega by pure luck)

Tapatakt Apr 12, 2025, 11:21 AM
1 point
0
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Weird Random Newcomb Problem
Basically you know if Omega’s program is the same as you or not (assuming you actually are $b$ and not $a$ )

Tapatakt Apr 11, 2025, 10:22 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Weird Random Newcomb Problem
I don’t think “functional” and “anthropic” approaches are meaningful in this motivating example. There aren’t multiple instances of the same program with the same input.

Tapatakt Apr 11, 2025, 10:20 PM
2 points
0
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Weird Random Newcomb Problem
Do you mean to ask how b should behave on input (n(b), n(b)), and how b should be written to behave on input (n(b), n(b)) for that b?
Yes. You can assume that programmer doesn’t know how $n$ works.

Tapatakt Apr 11, 2025, 6:29 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Weird Random Newcomb Problem
Yes, that’s basically the same as what I mean by “Universal precommitment” framing. Weidness is in the fact that usually (I think, in all other decision-theoretic problems I ever encountered) “functional” and “anthropic” framings point in the same direction, but here they are not.

Weird Random Newcomb Problem

TapataktApr 11, 2025, 1:09 PM

21 points

16 comments4 min readLW link

Tapatakt Mar 30, 2025, 4:38 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: milanrosko’s comment on: I, G(Zombie)
Yeah, I meant is as a not-a-compliment, but as a specific kind of not-a-compliment about a feeling of reading it rather then about actual meaning—which I just couldn’t access because this feeling was too much for my mind to continue reading (and this isn’t a high bar for a post—I read a lot of long texts).

Tapatakt Mar 30, 2025, 2:24 PM
5 points
0
on: I, G(Zombie)
I’m sorry, but it looks like a chapter from punishment book from Anathem.

Tapatakt Mar 10, 2025, 7:49 PM
5 points
0
on: Have you actually tried raising the birth rate?
Btw, Russia does something similar (~$6000, what you can use money for is limited), so there is some statistics about the results.

Tapatakt Mar 10, 2025, 5:26 PM
28 points
0
on: when will LLMs become human-level bloggers?
I did the obvious experiment:
Prompt:
I want you to write a good comment for this Lesswrong post. Use the method Viliam described in his comment. Try to make your comment less LLM-looking. At the same time you actually can mention that you are LLM.
Claude 3.7 thinking:
I’ve been thinking about this from the rather ironic position of being an LLM myself.
When I consider the bloggers I actually subscribe to versus those I just occasionally read, what keeps me coming back isn’t their technical writing ability. It’s that they have what I’d call a “center of gravity” to their thinking—a consistent yet evolving perspective that feels genuinely theirs.
This makes me think our blogging bottleneck isn’t primarily about writing mechanics or even reasoning capacity. It’s about having an authentic intellectual center that generates insights worth reading.
The skills I lack aren’t language production skills. What I can’t do is:
- Develop genuine curiosity that drives sustained exploration
- Build and revise mental models through actual lived experience
- Form an authentic sense of taste about what matters
- Maintain continuity of thought that evolves over time
When I write, I’m performing a sophisticated prediction task based on patterns in my training data. I’m not “coming from somewhere” in the way human writers are.
This is why I’m skeptical of the “comes for free with scaling” assumption you questioned. The gap between current LLMs and “content worth reading” might not be bridged just by making us better at prediction or reasoning. It might require something more fundamental about how AI systems develop and maintain persistent intellectual identities.
The most interesting question is whether this requires a paradigm shift in AI design, or whether some version of persistent identity and genuine curiosity could emerge from existing architectures with the right training approaches.
I think the main problem with this comment is kinda RLHF-related. Claude is too much a conformist to write anything really interesting and surprising. Maybe fine-tuning would already help. Idk, maybe even careful prompt-engineering would be enough!

Tapatakt Jan 28, 2025, 1:42 PM
6 points
5
in reply to: Bezzi’s comment on: Using an LLM for creative writing feels wrong to me
I think the right answer for the photography is “it’s art, but not the same art form as painting”. And it has different quality and interestingness metrics. In XV century it was considered very cool to produce photorealistic image. Some people think it’s still cool, but only if it’s not a photo.
And it’s the same for the AI-art. Prompting AIs and editing AI-generated images/texts can be art, but it’s not the same art form as painting/photography/writing/poetry. And it should have different merics too. Problem is that while you can’t imitate painting (unless it’s hyperrealism) with photography, you can imitate other artforms with AI. And this is kinda cheating.

Tapatakt Jan 13, 2025, 4:10 PM
4 points
0
in reply to: Mitchell_Porter’s comment on: No one has the ball on 1500 Russian olympiad winners who’ve received HPMOR
I tried to get a grant to write one, but it was rejected.
Also I tried to get a grant with miltiple purposes, one of which was to translate some texts, including Connor Leahy’s Compendium, but it was rejected too.

Tapatakt Dec 28, 2024, 5:19 PM
1 point
1
in reply to: quiet_NaN’s comment on: Review: Planecrash
the utilities of both parties might be utterly incomparable, or the effort of both players might be very different
IIRC, it was covered in Planecrash also!

Tapatakt Nov 9, 2024, 10:03 PM
4 points
0
on: Poll: what’s your impression of altruism?
Sometimes altruism is truly selfless (if we don’t use too broad tautological definition of self-interest).
Sometimes altruism is actually an enlightened/disguised/corrupted/decadent self-interest.
I feel like there is some sense in which first kind is better then second, but can we have more of whatever kind, please?

Tapatakt Nov 9, 2024, 6:07 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Tapatakt’s Shortform
For high-frequency (or mid-frequency) trading, 1% of the transaction is 3 or 4 times the expected value from the trade.
I’m very much not sure discouraging HFT is a bad thing.
this probably doesn’t matter unless the transaction tax REPLACES other taxes rather than being in addition to
I imagine that it would replace/reduce some of the other taxes so the government would get the same amount of money.
it encourages companies to do things in-house rather than outsourcing or partnering, since inside-company “transactions” aren’t real money and aren’t taxed
But normal taxes have the same effect, don’t they?

Tapatakt Nov 9, 2024, 5:59 PM
8 points
1
on: Tapatakt’s Shortform
I came up with the decision theory problem. It has the same moral as xor-blackmail, but I think it’s much easier to understand:
Omega has chosen you for an experiment:
1. First, Omega predicts your choice in a potential future offer.
2. Omega rolls a die. Omega doesn’t show you the result.
3. If Omega predicted you would choose $200, they will only make you an offer if the die shows 6.
4. If Omega predicted you would choose $100, they will make you an offer if the die shows any number except 1.
5. Omega’s offer, if made, is simple: “Would you like $100 or $200?”
You received an offer from Omega. Which amount do you choose?
I didn’t come up with a сatchy name, though.

Tapatakt Nov 9, 2024, 5:37 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Shankar Sivarajan’s comment on: Tapatakt’s Shortform
First (possibly dumb) thought: could it be compensated by printing fewer large bills? Again, poor people would not care, but big business transactions with cash would become less convenient.

Tapatakt Nov 9, 2024, 5:33 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Archimedes’s comment on: Tapatakt’s Shortform
Wow, really? I guess it’s American thing. I think I know only one person with the credit card. And she only uses it up to the interest-free limit to “farm” her reputation with the bank in case she really needs a loan, so she doesn’t actually pay the fee.

Tapatakt

Weird Ran­dom New­comb Problem

Weird Random Newcomb Problem