I watched Wicked (the 2024 movie) with my ex and his family at Christmas. My current stance is that it was pretty fun but not especially incredible or deep. I could be pretty wrong—watching movies isn’t my strong suit, but I do like chatting about them afterwards. Some thoughts:| world spirit sock puppet
Under present norms, if Alice associates with Bob, and Bob is considered objectionable in some way, Alice can be blamed for her association, even if there is no sign she was complicit in Bob’s sin. An interesting upshot is that as soon as you become visibly involved with someone, you are slightly invested in their social standing—when their social stock price rises and falls, yours also wavers.| world spirit sock puppet
Brains are like computers in that the hardware can do all kinds of stuff in principle, but each one tends to run through some particular patterns of activity repeatedly. For computers you can change this by changing programs. What are big ways brain ‘software’ changes?| world spirit sock puppet
Have the Accelerationists won? Last November Kevin Roose announced that those in favor of going fast on AI had now won against those favoring caution, with the reinstatement of Sam Altman at OpenAI. Let’s ignore whether Kevin’s was a good description of the world, and deal with a more basic question: if it were so—i.e. if Team Acceleration would control the acceleration from here on out—what kind of win was it they won?| world spirit sock puppet
You can read Ten arguments that AI is an existential risk by Nathan Young and I at the AI Impacts Blog.| world spirit sock puppet
A general thing I hadn’t noticed about debts until lately: Whenever Bob owes Alice, then Alice has reason to look after Bob, to the extent that increases the chance he satisfies the debt. Yet at the same time, Bob has an incentive for Alice to disappear, insofar as it would relieve him. These might be tiny incentives, and not overwhelm for instance Bob’s many reasons for not wanting Alice to disappear.| world spirit sock puppet
For those of you who enjoy learning things via listening in on numerous slightly different conversations about them, and who also want to learn more about this AI survey I led, three more podcasts on the topic, and also other topics: The AGI Show: audio, video (other topics include: my own thoughts about the future of AI and my path into AI forecasting) Consistently Candid: audio (other topics include: whether we should slow down AI progress, the best arguments for and against existential ris...| world spirit sock puppet
It’s interesting to me how chill people sometimes are about the non-extinction future AI scenarios. Like, there seem to be opinions around along the lines of “pshaw, it might ruin your little sources of ‘meaning’, Luddite, but we have always had change and as long as the machines are pretty near the mark on rewiring your brain it will make everything amazing”. Yet I would bet that even that person, if faced instead with a policy that was going to forcibly relocate them to New York C...| world spirit sock puppet
I was on the Center for AI Policy Podcast. We talked about topics around the 2023 Expert Survey on Progress in AI, including why I think AI is an existential risk, and how much to listen to AI researchers on the subject. Full transcript at the link.| world spirit sock puppet
People seem to find suffering deep. Serious writings explore the experiences of all manner of misfortunes, and the nuances of trauma and torment involved. It’s hard to write an essay about a really good holiday that seems as profound as an essay about a really unjust abuse. A dark past can be plumbed for all manner of meaning, whereas a slew of happy years is boring and empty, unless perhaps they are too happy and suggest something dark below the surface. (More thoughts in the vicinity of t...| world spirit sock puppet