zhukeepa

• zhukeepaAug 22, 2024, 6:39 PM

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  in reply to: Richard_Ngo’s comment on: Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion

  So my overall position here is something like: we should use religions as a source of possible deep insights about human psychology and culture, to a greater extent than LessWrong historically has (and I’m grateful to Alex for highlighting this, especially given the social cost of doing so).

  
  Thanks a lot for the kind words!

  IMO this all remains true even if we focus on the heuristics recommended by many religions, i.e. the pluralistic focus Alex mentions.

  I think we’re interpreting “pluralism” differently. Here are some central illustrations of what I consider to be the pluralist perspective:

  • the Catholic priest I met at the Parliament of World Religions who encouraged someone who had really bad experiences with Christianity to find spiritual truth in Hinduism

  • the passage in the Quran that says the true believers of Judaism and Christianity will also be saved

  • the Vatican calling the Buddha and Jesus great healers

  I don’t think “lots of religions recommend X” means the pluralist perspective thinks X is good. If anything, the pluralist perspective is actually pretty uncommon /​ unusual among religions, especially these days.

  Because if you understand the insights that Christianity is built upon, you can use those to reach people without the language of Christianity itself. And if you don’t understand those insights, then you don’t know how to avoid incorporating the toxic parts of Christianity.

  I think this doesn’t work for people with IQ ⇐ 100, which is about half the world. I agree that an understanding of these insights is necessary to avoid incorporating the toxic parts of Christianity, but I think this can be done even using the language of Christianity. (There’s a lot of latitude in how one can interpret the Bible!)

• zhukeepaAug 21, 2024, 4:37 AM

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  in reply to: Joel Burget’s comment on: Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion

  Perhaps these concerns would be addressed by examples of the kind of statement you have in mind.

  I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking—I wonder how much my reply to Adam Shai addresses your concerns?

  I will also mention this quote from the category theorist Lawvere, whose line of thinking I feel pretty aligned with:

  It is my belief that in the next decade and in the next century the technical advances forged by category theorists will be of value to dialectical philosophy, lending precise form with disputable mathematical models to ancient philosophical distinctions such as general vs. particular, objective vs. subjective, being vs. becoming, space vs. quantity, equality vs. difference, quantitative vs. qualitative etc. In turn the explicit attention by mathematicians to such philosophical questions is necessary to achieve the goal of making mathematics (and hence other sciences) more widely learnable and useable. Of course this will require that philosophers learn mathematics and that mathematicians learn philosophy.

  I think getting technical precision on philosophical concepts like these will play a crucial role in the kind of math I’m envisioning.

• zhukeepaAug 21, 2024, 4:27 AM

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  in reply to: Adam Shai’s comment on: Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion

  I’m not sure how much this answers your question, but:

  1. I actually think Buddhism’s metaphysics is quite well-fleshed-out, and AFAIK has the most fleshed-out metaphysical system out of all the religious traditions. I think it would be sufficient for my goals to find a formalization of Buddhist metaphysics, which I think would be detailed and granular enough to transcend and include the metaphysics of other religious traditions.

  2. I think a lot of Buddhist claims can be described in the predictive processing framework—see e.g. this paper giving a predictive processing account of no-self, and this paper giving a predictive processing account of non-dual awareness in terms of temporal depth. I would consider these papers small progress towards the goal, insofar as they give (relatively) precise computational accounts of some of the principles at play in Buddhism.

  3. I don’t think the mathematical foundations of predictive processing or active inference are very satisfactory yet, and I think there are aspects of Buddhist metaphysics that are not possible to represent in terms of these frameworks yet. Chris Fields (a colleague of Michael Levin and Karl Friston) has some research that I think extends active inference in directions that seem promising for putting active inference on sounder mathematical footing. I haven’t looked too carefully into his work, but I’ve been impressed by him the one time I talked with him, and I think it’s plausible that his research would qualify as small progress toward the goal.

  4. I’ve considered any technical model that illustrates the metaphysical concepts of emptiness and dependent origination (which are essentially the central concepts of Buddhism) to be small progress towards the goal. Some examples of this:

     1. In his popular book Helgoland, Carlo Rovelli directly compares the core ideas of relational quantum mechanics to dependent origination (see also the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy page on RQM).

     2. It can be very hard to wrap one’s mind around how the Buddhist concept of emptiness could apply for the natural numbers. I found John Baez’s online dialogue about how “‘the’ standard model [of arithmetic] is a much more nebulous notion than many seem to believe” to be helpful for understanding this.

     3. Non-classical logics that don’t take the law of excluded middle for granted helped me to make sense of the concept of emptiness in the context of truth vaues; the Kochen-Specker theorem helped me make sense of the concept of emptiness in the context of physical properties; and this paper giving a topos perspective on the Kochen-Specker theorem helped me put the two together.

  What links here?

  • Joel Burget's comment on Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion by Ben Pace (Aug 21, 2024, 7:58 PM; 2 points)
  • zhukeepa's comment on Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion by Ben Pace (Aug 21, 2024, 4:37 AM; 1 point)

• zhukeepaAug 21, 2024, 3:55 AM

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  in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion

  It’s relevant that I think of the type signature of religious metaphysical claims as being more like “informal descriptions of the principles of consciousnes /​ the inner world” (analogously to informal descriptions of the principles of the natural world) than like “ideology or narrative”. Lots of cultures independently made observations about the natural world, and Newton’s Laws in some sense could be thought of as a “Rosetta Stone” for these informal observations about the natural world.

• zhukeepaAug 21, 2024, 3:46 AM

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  in reply to: Mo Putera’s comment on: Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion

  Yeah, I also see broad similarities between my vision and that of the Meaning Alignment people. I’m not super familiar with the work they’re doing, but I’m pretty positive on the the little bits of it I’ve encountered. I’d say that our main difference is that I’m focusing on ungameable preference synthesis, which I think will be needed to robustly beat Moloch. I’m glad they’re doing what they’re doing, though, and I wouldn’t be shocked if we ended up collaborating at some point.

• zhukeepaAug 19, 2024, 9:15 AM

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  in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion

  Thanks for the elaboration. Your distinction about creating vs reconciling preferences seems to hinge on the distinction between “ur-want” and “proper want”. I’m not really drawing a type-level distinction between “ur-want” and “proper want”, and think of each flower as itself being a flowerbud that could further bloom. In my example of Alice wanting X, Bob wanting Y, and Carol proposing Z, I’d thought of X and Y as both “proper wants” and “ur-wants that bloomed into Z”

• zhukeepaAug 19, 2024, 2:56 AM

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  in reply to: Julian_R’s comment on: Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion

  Thanks, this really warmed my heart to read :) I’m glad you appreciated all those details!

• zhukeepaAug 19, 2024, 2:52 AM

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  in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion

  I don’t really get how what you just said relates to creating vs reconciling preferences. Can you elaborate on that a bit more?

• zhukeepaAug 18, 2024, 9:03 PM

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  in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion

  I’m not sure how you’re interpreting the distinction between creating a preference vs reconciling a preference.

  Suppose Alice wants X and Bob wants Y, and X and Y appear to conflict, but Carol shows up and proposes Z, which Alice and Bob both feel like addresses what they’d initially wanted from X and Y. Insofar as Alice and Bob both prefer Z over X and Y and hadn’t even considered Z beforehand, in some sense Carol created this preference for them; but I also think of this preference for Z as reconciling their conflicting preferences X and Y.

Ex­tended In­ter­view with Zhu­keepa on Religion

• zhukeepaJul 11, 2024, 4:06 PM

  17 points

  7

  on: De­com­pos­ing Agency — ca­pa­bil­ities with­out desires

  People sometimes say that AGI will be like a second species; sometimes like electricity. The truth, we suspect, lies somewhere in between. Unless we have concepts which let us think clearly about that region between the two, we may have a difficult time preparing.

  I just want to strongly endorse this remark made toward the end of the post. In my experience, the standard fears and narratives around AI doom invoke “second species” intuitions that I think stand on much shakier ground than is commonly acknowledged. (Things can still get pretty bad without a “second species”, of course, but I think it’s worth thinking clearly about what those alternatives look like, as well as how to think about them in the first place.)

• zhukeepaJun 14, 2024, 12:21 AM

  LW: 3 AF: 3

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  in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: UDT shows that de­ci­sion the­ory is more puz­zling than ever

  Thanks, Alex. Any connections between this and CTMU? (I’m in part trying to evaluate CTMU by looking at whether it has useful implications for an area that I’m relatively familiar with.)

  No direct connections that I’m aware of (besides non-classical logics being generally helpful for understanding the sorts of claims the CTMU makes).

• zhukeepaJun 11, 2024, 3:26 PM

  LW: 3 AF: 2

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  on: UDT shows that de­ci­sion the­ory is more puz­zling than ever

  Re: point 7, I found Jessica Taylor’s take on counterfactuals in terms of linear logic pretty compelling.

• zhukeepaApr 22, 2024, 11:06 PM

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  in reply to: kave’s comment on: CTMU in­sight: maybe con­scious­ness *can* af­fect quan­tum out­comes?

  Good question! Yeah, there’s nothing fundamentally quantum about this effect. But if the simulator wants to focus on universes with 1 & 2 fixed (e.g. if they’re trying to calculate the distribution of superintelligences across Tegmark IV), the PNRG (along with the initial conditions of the universe) seem like good places for a simulator to tweak things.

• zhukeepaApr 20, 2024, 6:36 PM

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  in reply to: quiet_NaN’s comment on: CTMU in­sight: maybe con­scious­ness *can* af­fect quan­tum out­comes?

  It is not clear to me that this would result in a lower Kolmogorov complexity at all. Such an algorithm could of course use a pseudo-random number generator for the vast majority quantum events which do not affect p(ASI) (like the creation of CMB photons), but this is orthogonal to someone nudging the relevant quantum events towards ASI. For these relevant events, I am not sure that the description “just do whatever favors ASI” is actually shorter than just the sequence of events.

  Hmm, I notice I may have been a bit unclear in my original post. When I’d said “pseudorandom”, I wasn’t referring to the use of a pseudo-random number generator instead of a true RNG. I was referring to the “transcript” of relevant quantum events only appearing random, without being “truly random”, because of the way in which they were generated (which I’m thinking of as being better described as “sampled from a space parameterizing the possible ways the world could be, conditional on humanity building superintelligence” rather than “close to truly random, or generated by a pseudo-random RNG, except with nudges toward ASI”.)

  I mean, if we are simulated by a Turing Machine (which is equivalent to quantum events having a low Kolmogorov complexity), then a TM which just implements the true laws of physics (and cheats with a PNRG, not like the inhabitants would ever notice) is surely simpler than one which tries to optimize towards some distant outcome state.

  
  As an analogy, think about the Kolmogorov complexity of a transcript of a very long game of chess. If both opponents are following a simple algorithm of “determine the allowed moves, then use a PRNG to pick one of them”, that should have a bound complexity. If both are chess AIs which want to win the game (i.e. optimize towards a certain state) and use a deterministic PRNG (lest we are incompressible), the size of your Turing Machine—which /​is/​ the Kolmogorov complexity—just explodes.

  Wouldn’t this also serve as an argument against malign consequentialists in the Solomonoff prior, that may make it a priori more likely for us to end up in a world with particular outcomes optimized in their favor?

  It is not clear to me that this would result in a lower Kolmogorov complexity at all.

  [...]

  Look at me rambling about universe-simulating TMs. Enough, enough.

  To be clear, it’s also not clear to me that this would result in a lower K-complexity either. My main point is that (1) the null hypothesis of quantum events being independent of consciousness rests on assumptions (like assumptions about what the Solomonoff prior is like) that I think are actually pretty speculative, and that (2) there are speculative ways the Solomonoff prior could be in which our consciousness can influence quantum outcomes.

  My goal here is not to make a positive case for consciousness affecting quantum outcomes, as much as it is to question the assumptions behind the case against the world working that way.

• zhukeepaApr 20, 2024, 6:26 PM

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  in reply to: quiet_NaN’s comment on: CTMU in­sight: maybe con­scious­ness *can* af­fect quan­tum out­comes?

  This. Physics runs on falsifiable predictions. If ‘consciousness can affect quantum outcomes’ is any more true than the classic ‘there is an invisible dragon in my garage’, then discovering that fact would seem easy from an experimentalist standpoint. Sources of quantum randomness (e.g. weak source+detector) are readily available, so any claimant who thinks they can predict or affect their outcomes could probably be tested initially for a few 100$.

  Yes, I’m also bearish on consciousness affecting quantum outcomes in ways that are as overt and measurable in the way you’re gesturing at. The only thing I was arguing in this post is that the effect size of consciousness on quantum outcomes is maybe more than zero, as opposed to obviously exactly zero. I don’t think of myself as having made any arguments that the effect size should be non-negligible, although I also don’t think that possibility has been ruled out for non-neglible effect sizes lying somewhere between “completely indistinguishable from no influence at all” and “overt and measurable to the extent a proclaimed psychic could reproducibly affect quantum RNG outcomes”.

• zhukeepaApr 20, 2024, 5:32 PM

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  in reply to: Mitchell_Porter’s comment on: CTMU in­sight: maybe con­scious­ness *can* af­fect quan­tum out­comes?

  I’ll take a stab at this. Suppose we had strong a priori reasons for thinking it’s in our logical past that we’ll have created a superintelligence of some sort. Let’s suppose that some particular quantum outcome in the future can get chaotically amplified, so that in one Everett branch humanity never builds any superintelligence because of some sort of global catastrophe (say with 99% probability, according to the Born rule), and in some other Everett branch humanity builds some kind of superintelligence (say with 1% probability, according to the Born rule). Then we should expect to end up in the Everett branch in which humanity builds some kind of superintelligence with ~100% probability, despite the Born rule saying we only have a 1% chance of ending up there, because the “99%-likely” Everett branch was ruled out by our a priori reasoning.

  I’m not sure if this is the kind of concrete outcome that you’re asking for. I imagine that, for the most part, the kind of universe I’m describing will still yield frequencies that converge on the Born probabilities, and for the most part appear indistinguishable from a universe in which quantum outcomes are “truly random”. See my reply to Joel Burget for some more detail about how I think about this hypothesis.

• zhukeepaApr 20, 2024, 5:10 PM

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  in reply to: Joel Burget’s comment on: CTMU in­sight: maybe con­scious­ness *can* af­fect quan­tum out­comes?

  If we performed a trillion ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ quantum coin flips, and found a program with K-complexity far less than a trillion that could explain these outcomes, that would be an example of evidence in favor of this hypothesis. (I don’t think it’s very likely that we’ll be able to find a positive result if we run that particular experiment; I’m naming it more to illustrate the kind of thing that would serve as evidence.) (EDIT: This would only serve as evidence against quantum outcomes being truly random. In order for it to serve as evidence in favor of quantum outcomes being impacted by consciousness, the low K-complexity program explaining these outcomes would need to route through the decisions of conscious beings somehow; it wouldn’t work if the program were just printing out digits of pi in binary, for example.)

  My inside view doesn’t currently lead me to put much credence on this picture of reality actually being true. My inside view is more like “huh, I notice I have become way more uncertain about the a priori arguments about what kind of universe we live in—especially the arguments that we live in a universe in which quantum outcomes are supposed to be ‘truly random’—so I will expand my hypothesis space for what kinds of universes we might be living in”.

  What links here?

  • zhukeepa's comment on CTMU in­sight: maybe con­scious­ness *can* af­fect quan­tum out­comes? by zhukeepa (Apr 20, 2024, 5:32 PM; 1 point)

• zhukeepaApr 19, 2024, 4:30 PM

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  on: CTMU in­sight: maybe con­scious­ness *can* af­fect quan­tum out­comes?

  Shortly after publishing this, I discovered something written by John Wheeler (whom Chris Langan cites) that feels thematically relevant. From Law Without Law:

  

• zhukeepa 19 Apr 2024 15:24 UTC

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  in reply to: justinpombrio’s comment on: The Cog­ni­tive-The­o­retic Model of the Uni­verse: A Par­tial Sum­mary and Review

  I was hoping people other than Jessica would share some specific curated insights they got. Syndiffeonesis is in fact a good insight.

  I finally wrote one up! It ballooned into a whole LessWrong post.