Matt Putz

• Matt PutzNov 25, 2021, 11:19 PM

  19 points

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  on: An­nounc­ing my retirement

  Thanks so much for looking after possibly my favorite place on the internet!

• Matt PutzNov 24, 2021, 11:27 PM

  4 points

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  on: When to get off the train to crazy town?

  Hey, thanks for writing this!

  Strong +1 for this part:

  I had conversations along the lines of “I already did a Bachelor’s in Biology and just started a Master’s in Nanotech, surely it’s too late for me to pivot to AI safety”. To which my response is “You’re 22, if you really want to go into AI safety, you can easily switch”.

  I think this pattern is especially suspicious when used to justify some career that’s impactful in one worldview over one that’s impactful in another.

  E.g. I totally empathize with people who aren’t into longtermism, but the reasoning should not be “I have already invested in this cause area and so I should pursue it, even though I believe the arguments that say it’s >>10x less impactful than longtermist cause areas”.

  I also get the impression that sometimes people use “personal fit for X” and “have already accumulated career capital for X” interchangeably, when I think the former is to a significant degree determined through inate talents. Thus the message “personal fit matters” is sometimes heard as a weaker version of “continue what you’re already doing”.

• Matt PutzNov 24, 2021, 11:05 PM

  4 points

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  on: What is most con­fus­ing to you about AI stuff?

  Here’s a couple that came to mind just now.

  1. How smart do you need to be to contribute meaningfully t AI safety? Near top in class in high-school? Near top in class at ivy-league? Potential famous prof at ivy league? Potential fields medalist?

  2. Also, how hard should we expect alignment to be? Are we trying to throw resources at a problem we expect to be able to at least partially solve in most worlds (which is e.g. the superficial impression I get from biorisk) or are we attempting a hail mary, because it might just work and it’s important enough to be worth a try (not saying that would be bad)?

  3. Big labs in the West that kind of target AGI are OpenAI and DeepMind. Others target AGI less explicitly, but inlcude e.g. Google Brain. Are there equivalents elsewhere? China? Do we know whether these exits? Am I missing labs that target AGI in the West?

  4. Finally, this one’s kind of obvious, but how large is the risk? What’s the probability of catastrophe? I’m aware of many estimates, but this is still definitely something I’m confused about.

  ---

  I think on all these questions except (3), there’s substantial disagreement among AI safety researchers, though I don’t have a good feeling for the distributions of views either.

• Matt PutzNov 20, 2021, 8:55 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: mic’s comment on: We need al­ter­na­tives to In­tro EA Fellowships

  I agree it’s fine if fellowships aren’t interesting to already-engaged EAs and I also see why the question is asked—I don’t even have a strong view on whether it’s a bad idea to ask it.

  I do think though that the fellowship would have been boring to me at times, even if I had known much less about EA. But maybe I’m just not the type of person who likes to learn stuff in groups and I was never part of the target audience.

• Matt PutzNov 19, 2021, 1:05 PM

  3 points

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  on: We need al­ter­na­tives to In­tro EA Fellowships

  Thanks for writing this, I think it’s great you’re thinking about alternatives!

  The way I learned about EA was just by spending too much time on the forum and with the 80k podcast.

  Then, I once attended one session of a fellowship and was a little underwhelmed. I remember the question “so can anybody name the definition of an existential risk according to Toby Ord” after we had been asked to read about exactly that — this just seemed like a waste of time. But to be fair, I was also much more familiar with EA at that point than an average fellow. It’s very possible that other people had a better experience in the same session.

  But I definitely agree there’s room for experimentation and probably improvement!

• Matt PutzNov 18, 2021, 9:20 AM

  7 points

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  on: Can we in­fluence the val­ues of our de­scen­dants?

  Thanks for writing this up, super interesting!

  Intuitively I would expect persistence effects to be weaker now than e.g. 300 years ago. This is mostly because today society changes much more rapidly than back then. I would guess that it’s more common now to live hundreds of kilometres from where you grew up, that the internet allows people to “choose” their culture more freely (my parents like EA less than I do), that the same goes for bigger cities etc. Generally advice from my parents and grandparents sometimes feels outdated, which makes me less likely to listen to it — this may always have been true of young generations, but I feel the advice really is more outdated today than it would have been 300 years ago. In short, I would expect to be much more influenced by my grandparents if I were running their farm with basically the same methods.

  This is all super speculative of course and I don’t have any hard evidence (other than economic growth rates being higher). But do you agree that there may be reasons to expect this effect to have decreased by a nontrivial amount?

• Matt PutzOct 18, 2021, 1:05 PM

  1 point

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  on: An up­date in fa­vor of try­ing to make tens of billions of dollars

  Hadn’t seen that one, interesting!

• Matt PutzOct 18, 2021, 12:56 PM

  3 points

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  in reply to: Stefan_Schubert’s comment on: An up­date in fa­vor of try­ing to make tens of billions of dollars

  I agree! I’ve added an edit to the post, referencing your comment.

• Matt PutzOct 18, 2021, 12:51 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Tsunayoshi’s comment on: An up­date in fa­vor of try­ing to make tens of billions of dollars

  Thanks for pointing this out! Hadn’t known about this, though it totally makes sense in retrospect that markets would find some way of partially cancelling that inefficiency. I’ve added an edit to the post.

• Matt PutzOct 18, 2021, 12:40 PM

  3 points

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  in reply to: Leon Lang’s comment on: An up­date in fa­vor of try­ing to make tens of billions of dollars

  Thanks for pointing that out! I agree it’s notable and have added it to the list. I don’t have a strong opinion on how important this is relative to other things on there.

• Matt PutzOct 18, 2021, 12:33 PM

  5 points

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  in reply to: lincolnq’s comment on: An up­date in fa­vor of try­ing to make tens of billions of dollars

  Thanks for your comment! Super interesting to hear all that.

  And my pledge is 10%, although I expect more like 50-75% to go to useful world-improving things but don’t want to pledge it because then I’m constrained by what other people think is effective.

  Amazing! Glory to you :) I’ve added this to the post.

• Matt PutzOct 18, 2021, 9:20 AM

  3 points

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  in reply to: Aaron Gertler 🔸’s comment on: How to use the Forum

  Thanks, it’s probably better that way!

• Matt PutzOct 15, 2021, 6:35 AM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Nicholas Kross’s comment on: An up­date in fa­vor of try­ing to make tens of billions of dollars

  Thanks a lot for saying this!

  Yeah, I wonder about the flexibility as well. At least, “I have good reason to think I could’ve gone to MIT/​ Jane Street...” should go a long way (if you’re not delusional).

• Matt PutzOct 14, 2021, 9:29 PM

  1 point

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  on: How to use the Forum

  Are upvotes anonymous or is there a way to view who upvoted your comments /​ posts? I’m not saying it should be one way or another, just curious.

• Matt PutzSep 16, 2021, 12:55 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Aaron Gertler 🔸’s comment on: First vs. last name poli­cies?

  Thanks for adding your opinion!

  Yeah, coming from Luxembourg and studying in Germany, I do get the feeling that the norms differ here. I prefer first name norms though, so that’s great :)

• Matt PutzSep 11, 2021, 5:30 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: SamiM’s comment on: First vs. last name poli­cies?

  Right! Thanks, I’ve fixed it!

• Matt PutzSep 11, 2021, 5:28 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: First vs. last name poli­cies?

  Thanks for your answer! I agree it’s strange that these kinds of formalities are still so much of a thing among otherwise egalitarian people.

• Matt PutzSep 11, 2021, 5:26 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: First vs. last name poli­cies?

  Thanks! That’s super helpful.

[Question] First vs. last name poli­cies?

• Matt PutzJul 7, 2021, 6:07 PM

  3 points

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  on: Anki deck for “Some key num­bers that (al­most) ev­ery EA should know”

  I cannot express how much I love this!!! Thanks so much!