TsviBT

Karma: 7,209

TsviBT 21 May 2025 23:37 UTC
24 points
−12
in reply to: Matthew Khoriaty’s comment on: Matthew Khoriaty’s Shortform
My version:

Probably too understated, but it’s the sort of thing I like.

GoogleDraw link if anyone wants to copy and modify: https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/10nB-1GC_LWAZRhvFBJnAAzhTNJueDCtwHXprVUZChB0/edit

TsviBT 21 May 2025 16:45 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Dw629’s comment on: TsviBT’s Shortform
Yeah unfortunately it seems to be the case that no one has really seriously tried (ie invested a lot of resources, on the scale of a large company or a government) to do R&D on significantly increasing IQ in healthy people through drugs...

Ok.
1. Cringe. But,
2. If anyone is reading this, if Dw629′s claims are true, this is a place where everyone’s dropping the ball for no good reason, so you could have the ball!
I really do recommend to talk with the people at Nootopics.

Yep… If I find the time/energy I’ll do so.

Thanks for your help!

TsviBT 20 May 2025 21:28 UTC
9 points
0
in reply to: Dw629’s comment on: TsviBT’s Shortform
Very interesting, thanks. I’ve now read most of your links. Obviously I can’t actually evaluate them but they seem intriguing… Especially because IIUC they at least allege positive effects working on different regions of the brain (and contributing to improvements on different sorts of tests), which suggests maybe they can stack.

I take your point that no one’s really trying. Has anyone really tried to really try? For example, has someone who actually knows their stuff tried working out a plausible market plan (e.g. how to deal with regulation), and then tried to get venture capital, for intelligence enhancement? I guess there’s tons of stuff sold as mind enhancing, though presumably it’s mostly useless; and if these are all research chemicals from pharma companies then they’d be hard to sell… Or, has anyone tried a noncommercial (philanthropic, say) angle? Maybe I should talk to the Noo people.

TsviBT 20 May 2025 21:07 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: dr_s’s comment on: TsviBT’s Shortform
Hm. TBC, the broader category would be “molecule that would activate master regulation of one or more gene regulatory networks related to brain function”, e.g. a hormone but maybe also some other things.

TsviBT 19 May 2025 18:21 UTC
7 points
0
in reply to: Farkas’s comment on: TsviBT’s Shortform
Thanks. Seems worth looking into more. I googled the first few on your list, and they’re all described as working via some neurotransmitter / receptor type, either agonist / antagonist / reuptake inhibition. Not everything on the list is like that (I recognize gingko biloba as being related to blood flow). But I don’t think these sorts of things would stack at all, or even necessarily help much with someone who isn’t sick / has some big imbalance or whatever.

My hope for something like this existing is a bit more specific. It comes from thinking that there should be small levers with large effects, because natural development probably pulls some such levers which activate specific gene regulatory networks at different points—e.g. first we pull the [baby-type brain lever], then the [5 year old brain lever], etc.

TsviBT 19 May 2025 8:33 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: dr_s’s comment on: TsviBT’s Shortform
Thanks. One of the first places I’d look would be hormones, which IIUC don’t count as small molecules? Though maybe natural hormones have already been tried? But I’d wonder about more obscure or risky ones, e.g. ones normally only active in children.

TsviBT 19 May 2025 0:37 UTC
32 points
2
on: TsviBT’s Shortform
Periodic reminder: AFAIK (though I didn’t look much) no one has thoroughly investigated whether there’s some small set of molecules, delivered to the brain easily enough, that would have some major regulatory effects resulting in greatly increased cognitive ability. (Feel free to prove me wrong with an example of someone plausibly doing so, i.e. looking hard enough and thinking hard enough that if such a thing was feasible to find and do, then they’d probably have found it—but “surely, surely, surely someone has done so because obviously, right?” is certainly not an accepted proof. And don’t call me Shirley!)

I’m simply too busy, but you’re not!

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jTiSWHKAtnyA723LE/overview-of-strong-human-intelligence-amplification-methods#Signaling_molecules_for_creative_brains

TsviBT 8 May 2025 1:11 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Mass_Driver’s comment on: Please Donate to CAIP (Post 1 of 3 on AI Governance)
(Thank you, seems valuable!)

TsviBT 7 May 2025 17:54 UTC
10 points
0
on: Please Donate to CAIP (Post 1 of 3 on AI Governance)

Our experience has been that talking to Congressional staffers about a ban or pause on superintelligence research tends to result in blank stares and a rapid end to the meeting. [...] A global moratorium [....] we don’t see anything that we can do to help make that happen.

Ok. Thank you for the info. Would you speculate a bit about what might change this, that other people might be able to do? E.g. what number of call-ins to their offices from constituents, or how many protests, or what industry testimony, or how much campaign funding, etc.

TsviBT 6 May 2025 10:40 UTC
17 points
17
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: Eukryt Wrts Blg
I mean, I’m not familiar with the whole variety of different ways and reasons that people attack other people as “racist”. I’m just saying that only saying true statements is not conclusive evidence that you’re not a racist, or that you’re not having the effect of supporting racist coalitions. I guess this furthermore implies that it can be justified to attack Bob even if Bob only says true statements, assuming it’s sometimes justified to attack people for racist action-stances, apart from any propositional statements they make—but yeah, in that case you’d have to attack Bob for something other than “Bob says false statements”, e.g. “Bob implicitly argues for false statements via emphasis” or “Bob has bad action-stances”.

TsviBT 6 May 2025 10:20 UTC
15 points
12
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: Eukryt Wrts Blg
Huh? No? Filling in the missing narrative can take a bunch of work, like days or months of study. (What is it even a cope for?)

TsviBT 6 May 2025 10:05 UTC
34 points
25
in reply to: cubefox’s comment on: Eukryt Wrts Blg

The term “racist” usually carries the implication or implicature of an attitude that is merely based on an irrational prejudice, not an empirical hypothesis with reference to a significant amount of statistical and other evidence.

It is also possible that Bob is racist in the sense of successfully working to cause unjust ethnic conflict of some kind, but also Bob only says true things. Bob could selectively emphasize some true propositions and deemphasize others. The richer the area, the more you can pick and choose, and paint a more and more outrage-inducing, one-sided story (cf. Israel/Palestine conflict). If I had to guess, in practice racists do systematically say false things; but a lot of the effect comes from selective emphasis.

Things can get even more muddied if people are unepistemically pushing against arguments that X; then someone might be justified in selectively arguing for X, in order to “balance the scales”. That could be an appropriate thing to do if the only problem was that some group was unepistemically pushing against X—you correct the shared knowledge pool by bringing back in specifically the data that isn’t explained by the unepistemic consensus. But if X is furthermore some natural part of a [selective-emphasis memeplex aimed at generating political will towards some unjust adversariality], then you look a lot like you’re intentionally constructing that memeplex.

(Not implying anything about Cremieux, I’m barely familiar with his work.)

TsviBT 5 May 2025 6:16 UTC
LW: 11 AF: 5
0
AF
in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: orthonormal’s Shortform
See Jessica’s comment. Yeah it’s primitive recursive assuming that your deductive process is primitive recursive. (Also assuming that your traders are primitive recursive; e.g. if they are polytime as in the paper.) There’s probably some other parameters not necessarily set in the implementation described in the paper, e.g. the enumerator of trader-machines, but you can make those primrec.

TsviBT 4 May 2025 0:44 UTC
14 points
2
on: Open Thread Spring 2025
I wish more people were interested in lexicogenesis as a serious/shared craft. See:

The possible shared Craft of deliberate Lexicogenesis: https://tsvibt.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-possible-shared-craft-of-deliberate.html (lengthy meditation—recommend skipping around; maybe specifically look at https://tsvibt.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-possible-shared-craft-of-deliberate.html#seeds-of-the-shared-craft)

Sidespeak: https://tsvibt.github.io/theory/pages/bl_25_04_25_23_19_30_300996.html

Tiny community: https://lexicogenesis.zulipchat.com/ Maybe it should be a discord or a reddit, thoughts?

TsviBT 30 Apr 2025 6:41 UTC
6 points
4
on: Bandwidth Rules Everything Around Me: Oliver Habryka on OpenPhil and GoodVentures
Thanks for doing this! Clarifying things is good.

TsviBT 29 Apr 2025 12:02 UTC
4 points
0
on: What are the best standardised, repeatable bets?
I think occassionally some lotteries are positive or neutral-ish EV, when the jackpots are really big (like >$1billion)? Not sure. You have to check the taxes and the payment schedules etc.

TsviBT 27 Apr 2025 23:10 UTC
4 points
−4
in reply to: romeo’s comment on: romeo’s Shortform
These arguments are so nonsensical that I don’t know how to respond to them without further clarification, and so far the people I’ve talked to about them haven’t provided that clarification. “Programming” is not a type of cognitive activity any more than “moving your left hand in some manner” is. You could try writing out the reasoning, trying to avoid enthymemes, and then I could critique it / ask followup questions. Or we could have a conversation that we record and publish.

TsviBT 27 Apr 2025 5:54 UTC
17 points
5
in reply to: romeo’s comment on: romeo’s Shortform
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sTDfraZab47KiRMmT/views-on-when-agi-comes-and-on-strategy-to-reduce

TsviBT 26 Apr 2025 5:56 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: Eli Tyre’s comment on: Views on when AGI comes and on strategy to reduce existential risk
I won’t give why I think this, but I’ll give another reason that should make you more seriously consider this: their sample complexity sucks.

TsviBT 26 Apr 2025 5:53 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Eli Tyre’s comment on: Views on when AGI comes and on strategy to reduce existential risk
Just think of anything that you’ve wanted to use a gippity to understand, but it didn’t quickly work and you tried to ask it followup questions and it didn’t understand what was happening / didn’t propagate propositions / didn’t clarify / etc.