“Few people are actually trying to do good. The best explanation for most people’s behavior—even when they think they are trying to do good—is that they are trying to feel good and look good.”
kokotajlod
Karma: 772
Persuasion Tools: AI takeover without AGI or agency?
“No, I do not really hear the screams of everyone suffering in Hell. But I thought to myself, ‘I suppose if I tell them now that I have the magic power to hear the screams of the suffering in Hell, then they will go quiet, and become sympathetic, and act as if that changes something.’ Even though it changes nothing. Who cares if you can hear the screams, as long as you know that they are there? So maybe what I said was not fully wrong. Maybe it is a magic power granted only to the Comet King. Not the power to hear the screams. But the power not to have to.” -The Comet King, a character in Unsong
“One who wishes to believe says, “Does the evidence permit me to believe?” One who wishes to disbelieve asks, “Does the evidence force me to believe?” Beware lest you place huge burdens of proof only on propositions you dislike, and then defend yourself by saying: “But it is good to be skeptical.” If you attend only to favorable evidence, picking and choosing from your gathered data, then the more data you gather, the less you know. If you are selective about which arguments you inspect for flaws, or how hard you inspect for flaws, then every flaw you learn how to detect makes you that much stupider.” -Yudkowksy
There are actually two struggles between good and evil within each person. The first is the struggle to choose the right path despite all the temptations to choose the wrong path; it is the struggle to make actions match words. The second is the struggle to correctly decide which path is right and which is wrong. Many people who win one struggle lose the other. Do not lose sight of this fact or you will be one of them.
“Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie.” -Miyamoto Musashi
“Politics is the mind-killer.” -Yudkowsky
“If you get the right answer to the wrong question, you still die.”—Van Jones
“Take pride in noticing when you are confused, or when evidence goes against what you think. Rejoice when you change your mind.”
Thanks for this! It’s been a long time since I wrote this so I don’t remember why I thought it was from MIRI/FHI. I think it’s because the guesstimate model has two sub-models, one titled “the MIRI method” and one titled “The community method (developed by Owen CB and Daniel Dewey” who were at the time associated with FHI I believe. So I must have figured the first model came from MIRI and the second model came from FHI.
I’ll correct the error.
Here are some people you could reach out to:
Stefan Schubert (IIRC he is skeptical of this sort of thing, so maybe he’ll be a good addition to the conversation)
Mojmir Stehlik (He’s been thinking about polarization)
David Althaus (He’s been thinking about forecasting platforms as a potential tractible and scalable intervention to raise the sanity waterline)
There are probably a bunch of people who are also worth talking to but these are the ones I know of off the top of my head.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me:
--Short term AI risks like you mention definitely increase X-risk, because they make it harder to solve AI risk (and other x-risks too, though I think those are less probable)
--I currently think there are things we can do about it, but they seem difficult: Figuring out what regulations would be good and then successfully getting them passed, probably against opposition, and definitely against competition from other interest groups with other issues.
--It’s certainly a neglected issue compared to many hot-button political topics. I would love to see more attention paid to it and more smart people working on it. I just think it’s probably not more neglected than AI risk reduction.
Basically, I think this stuff is currently at the “There should be a couple EAs seriously investigating this, to see how probable and large the danger is and try to brainstorm tractible solutions.” If you want to be such an EA, I encourage you to do so, and would be happy to read and give comments on drafts, video chat to discuss, etc. If no one else was doing it, I might do it myself even. (Like I said, I am working on a post about persuasion tools, motivated by feeling that someone should be talking about this...)
I think probably such an investigation will only confirm my current opinions (yup, we should focus on AI risk reduction directly rather than on raising the sanity waterline via reducing short-term risk) but there’s a decent chance that it would chance my mind and make me recommend more people switch from AI risk stuff to this stuff.
My off-the-cuff answers:
--Yes, the EA community neglects these things in the sense that it prioritizes other things. However, I think it is right to do so. It’s definitely a very important, tractable, and neglected issue, but not as important or neglected as AI alignment, for example. I am not super confident in this judgment and would be happy to see more discussion/analysis. In fact, I’m currently drafting a post on a related topic (persuasion tools).
--I don’t know, but I’d be interested to see research into this question. I’ve heard of a few charities and activist groups working on this stuff but don’t have a good sense of how effective they are.
--I don’t know much about them; I saw their film The Social Dilemma and liked it.
How Roodman’s GWP model translates to TAI timelines
Who is the “we” you are talking about? I imagine the people who end that politician’s career would not be EAs. So it seems like your example is an example of different people having different standards, not the same people having different standards in different contexts.
Hmm, yeah, I guess doing a prize is less costly than hiring someone in the event that it doesn’t work. So I might as well experiment with that for a bit. Thanks!
If you are looking for ideas for things to do, want to chat sometime?
Yes. I did that a while ago. But that just gets me more money, and not even a lot of money. I need knowledge and help much more than money.
Yeah, though it’s of course heavily inspired by things people say on LessWrong. Thanks! It was one of my wedding vows.