Morpheus

Karma: 25

Morpheus 27 Feb 2024 7:43 UTC
2 points
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on: Who wants to be hired? (Feb-May 2024)
TLDR: Recent B.S. Computer Science Graduate. Seeking opportunities. Looking for roles to widen my skillset (for example through a role in operations). Open to roles that build upon my current skill set or that expand my skills in operations or technical writing. Interested in reducing xrisk through technical or policy work on AI or biorisk.

Skills & background: General Math and Programming skills. Participated in John Wentworth’s SERIMATS online stream for technical AI alignment in 2023. I know how to use python, pandas, matplotlib and pytorch. I coorganized the local EA group in Karlsruhe from 2022 to 2023. I am fluent in German and English.

Location/remote: Currently based in Germany. Open to both remote work and potential relocation depending on the role.

Availability & type of work: Available to start immediately, looking for full-time positions but open to part-time roles or project-based work as well.

Resume/LinkedIn

Email/contact: For email, see resume (Feel free to DM me on the Forum as well.)

Morpheus 27 Oct 2022 10:26 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Prometheus’s comment on: Five Areas I Wish EAs Gave More Focus

Not really. The perfusion techniques haven’t really updated in decades.

Honestly, not knowledgeable enough to know how much of a qualitative difference that makes (eg. how much does that increase your expected value of future you?).

They might also improve the process somewhat, but at the current scope, the impact is very limited as long as there is like less than (~10,000?) (just a ballpark, not looking up actual number) people signed up, and the whole thing costs ~50,000$ if you are getting it real cheap. Like, I also have extended family members that are close to dying, but I am not close enough to them to convince them that this could be a good idea and the cost is a real issue for 99% of the population (Maybe more could save the money in their bank account, but can they reason through the decision?). I honestly think that there are lots of people who would sign up for cryonics if given more capacity/time to think for themselves, but it’s hard enough to get people to invest their money for future self in the same lifetime.

I think Tomorrow Biostasis is doing the kind of thing I’m speaking of, but would love to see more organizations like them.

Yeah, I had a call with them as I was not sure whether I would want to sign up or not, and it seems they are doing a great job at making the process way less painfull and weird. Not sure about the exact numbers anymore, but I remember that they expect to outgrow Alcor in a few years (or have they already?). I would really question whether there is room for lots of more cryo organizations if the public perception of them does not change, and I would definitely question whether it would be the best thing to pursue on longtermist grounds (rather than selfish (totally reasonable) grounds). I still recommend friends of mine to look into cryonics, but only because I care about them, if they care about helping other people I’d recommend other things.

Morpheus 27 Oct 2022 8:19 UTC
1 point
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on: Five Areas I Wish EAs Gave More Focus

I do not see the difference in those dying of other causes also being a tragedy. Even if you do believe extending the human lifespan is not important, consider the alternative case where you’re wrong.

I think most EAs would agree that death is bad. The important question would be how tractable life expansion is.

This is related to Life Extension, but even more neglected, and probably even more impactful. The number of people actually working on cryonics to improve human minds is easily below 100. A key advancement from one individual in research, technology, or organizational improvement could likely have enormous impact. The reason for doing this goes back to the idea of irrecoverable loss of sentient minds. As with life extension, if you do not believe cryonics to be important or even possible, consider the alternative where you’re wrong. If one day we do manage to bring people back from suspended animation, I believe humanity will weep for all those that were needlessly thrown in the dirt or the fire: for they are the ones there is no hope for, an irreversible tragedy. The main reason why I think this isn’t being worked on more is because it is even “weirder” than most EA causes, despite making a good deal of sense.

Not sure if I can speak for everyone here, but personally I am not optimistic enough about AI to focus on cryo. Also, the limiting factor for cryonics seems to be more it’s weirdness rather than research? The technology exists. The costs are probably only going down if more people sign up, right?

Morpheus 27 Oct 2022 8:06 UTC
3 points
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on: Five Areas I Wish EAs Gave More Focus

This might come as the biggest surprise to be on the list. After all, space exploration is expensive and difficult. But there are very few out there who are actually working on how to change humanity from being a Single Point of Failure System. If we are serious about longtermism and truly decreasing x-risk, this might be one of the most crucial achievements needed. Any x-risk is most likely greatly reduced by this, even perhaps AGI*. The sooner this process begins, the greater the reduction in risk, since this will be a very slow process.

Seems not everyone agrees with you that this is hard. See also the paper if video is not your thing.

Morpheus 27 Oct 2022 7:55 UTC
3 points
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on: Five Areas I Wish EAs Gave More Focus
I was also confused about why no one has written something more extensive on nanotech. My guess would be that, it might be rather hard to have a catastrophe ‘by accident’ as the gray goo failure mode is rather obviously undesirable. From the Wikipedia article on gray goo I gathered that Erik Drexler thinks it’s totally possible to develop safe nanotechnology. That distinguishes it from AI which he seems to have shifted his focus to. See also this report, I found through this question

Morpheus 7 Oct 2022 8:31 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Guy Raveh’s comment on: Announcing the Future Fund’s AI Worldview Prize
I sort of view AGI as a standin for powerful optimization capable of killing us in AI Alignment contexts.

Morpheus 7 Oct 2022 8:22 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Guy Raveh’s comment on: Announcing the Future Fund’s AI Worldview Prize
Yeah, I think I would count these as unambigous in hindsight. Though siren Worlds might be an exception.

Morpheus 6 Oct 2022 1:05 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Guy Raveh’s comment on: Announcing the Future Fund’s AI Worldview Prize
Do you also think this yourself? I don’t clearly see what worlds look like, where P (doom | AGI) would be ambiguous in hindsight? Some mayor accident because everything is going too fast?

Morpheus 10 Sep 2022 13:26 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Morpheus’s comment on: Join ASAP (AI Safety Accountability Programme) 🚀
email worked

Morpheus 10 Sep 2022 13:21 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Join ASAP (AI Safety Accountability Programme) 🚀
Just in case this has something to do with the link: I got an error when trying to join the group with my google account. (Might try with email later).

Morpheus 23 Jul 2021 0:56 UTC
12 points
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on: A Sequence Against Strong Longtermism
I like your comparisons with other historical cases when people thought they had inevitable theories about society, and it is a thing I think about.
I do have a pet peeve though about the following claim.
Expected values were being used by the authors inappropriately (that is, without data to inform the probability estimates).
Let’s consider a very short argument for strong longterminism (and a tractable way to influence the distant future by reducing x-risk):
- There is a lot of future ahead of us.
- The universe is large
- humans are fragile/the universe is harsh (most planets are not inhabitable for us (yet). We don’t survive in most space by default)
⇒ Therefore expected outcomes of your actions for the near future become rounding errors compared to future expected outcomes by making sure humanity survives.
All three of these points (while more might be necessary for a convincing case for longterminism) are very much informed by physical theories which in turn have been informed by data about the world we live in (observing through a telescope, going to the moon)!
To illustrate:
- Had I been born in a universe where physicists were predicting with high degrees of certainty (through well-established theories like thermodynamics in our world) that the universe (all of which already inhabited) would be facing an inevitable heat death in 1000 years from now, then I would think that the arguments for longterminism were weak since they would not apply to the universe we live in.

I am not convinced by your arguments around epistemology. I don’t understand your fascination with Popper. Popper’s philosophy seems more like an informal way to make bayesian updates. You did not provide sufficient evidence for me to convince me to the contrary. While I agree that rigid Bayseanism has flaws, my current best guess means more subjectivism, not less.

Morpheus 20 Jul 2021 22:25 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Morpheus’s comment on: Anki deck for “Some key numbers that (almost) every EA should know”
My new Favorite: What share of total computation did pocket calculators account for in 1986?
41%

Morpheus 20 Jul 2021 21:58 UTC
3 points
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on: Anki deck for “Some key numbers that (almost) every EA should know”
Thank you! The most surprising (though maybe not most impactful) cards for me so far were the once on neurons:
Sure. Mammals make up the minority of neurons, but HOW ON EARTH are 90 Percent of those from humans?
Also, 30% from fish? I would have expected fish to be negligible.

Morpheus 31 Mar 2021 15:08 UTC
2 points
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on: Statistics for Lazy People, Part 1
I really like the idea behind this post/series. I’d already come across Lindy’s Law/delta T and the rule of succession, by reading other people use it in their predictions, but I had already thought that this was a really inefficient way to learn. I skimmed a few statistics textbooks, but I did not come across a lot of techniques that I actually ended up using.
I also liked the examples you gave. I felt like 1-3 explicit practice Problems at the end would also have been nice like:
Tesla was founded in 2003.
- How many years from now does tesla have a 25/75% chance to exist?
Or maybe this is silly?
Anyway...
I knew that the Lifetime of something depends on the time it stuck around and had a rough mental image of the distribution, but so far I did not actually bother calculating it explicitly. So thanks for the heuristics.
Your post actually made me think about how very often the lifetime of something is very dependent on the lifetime of something else whose distribution is better known. Often you can just substitute one probability for the other, but sometimes this is more difficult. For example, when someone is 60 and he has been in the same company for 45 years then I don’t expect him to stay another 45, because I roughly know when people tend to retire which in turn is dependent on the expected lifetime of someone. The most extreme/ridiculous form of this is of course how every long-term forecast you make can be totally dominated by your timelines for AGI.