Will Aldred

Karma: 4,597

Will Aldred Dec 12, 2023, 3:31 PM
26 points
3 ∶ 0
on: Who is Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) really, and how could he have done what he did? - three theories and a lot of evidence
the actions he [SBF] was convicted of are nearly universally condemned by the EA community
I don’t think that observing lots of condemnation and little support is all that much evidence for the premise you take as given—that SBF’s actions were near-universally condemned by the EA community—compared to meaningfully different hypotheses like “50% of EAs condemned SBF’s actions.”
There was, and still is, a strong incentive to hide any opinion other than condemnation (e.g., support, genuine uncertainty) over SBF’s fraud-for-good ideology, out of legitimate fear of becoming a witch-hunt victim. By the law of prevalence, I therefore expect the number of EAs who don’t fully condemn SBF’s actions to be far greater than the number who publicly express opinions other than full condemnation.
(Note: I’m focusing on the morality of SBF’s actions, and not on executional incompetence.)
Anecdotally, of the EAs I’ve spoken to about the FTX collapse with whom I’m close—and who therefore have less incentive to hide what they truly believe from me—I’d say that between a third and a half fall into the genuinely uncertain camp (on the moral question of fraud for good causes), while the number in the support camp is small but not zero.^[1]
1. ^
  And of those in my sample in the condemn camp, by far the most commonly-cited reason is timeless decision theory / pre-committing to cooperative actions, which I don’t think is the kind of reason one jumps to when one hears that EAs condemn fraud for good-type thinking.

Will Aldred Dec 12, 2023, 12:08 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: War in space, whether civilizations age, and the best things possible in our universe (Anders Sandberg on the 80,000 Hours Podcast)
I notice I’m confused by what Anders says about the offence-defence balance.
The argument, as I understand it, is that in the far future there’ll be a lot of space—lightyears, perhaps—between warring factions/civilizations. Offensive attacks therefore won’t work well because, with all the distance the offensive weapons need to cover, the defenders will have plenty of time to block or move out of the way.
But… this relies on the defenders seeing the weapons approaching, no? And I would expect weapons of the far future to travel at or very close to the speed of light,^[1] making it impossible to see them coming until they’ve already hit you. (Which would mean that the balance favours offence, not defence.)
This seems like a basic enough point, though, that I’m sure it’s part of Anders’ thinking already; I expect I’m missing something.
1. ^
  e.g., high-powered lasers, other types of directed-energy weapons, projectiles accelerated via thermonuclear reaction, pion drive, or artificial black hole

Will Aldred Dec 11, 2023, 2:54 PM
4 points
1 ∶ 1
on: Why Yudkowsky is wrong about “covalently bonded equivalents of biology”
This isn’t an isolated incident either, by the way. See my write-up on the errors in the math in the quantum physics sequences
The average physics textbook contains multiple errors of the order, “forgot to include the normalization term.”^[1] To me, it seems incorrect to bring up Eliezer’s error as strong evidence that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, without acknowledging the base rate of similar errors.
(I recognize that you also point to Eliezer’s economics errors. I haven’t read Inadequate Equilibria or the post critiquing it, so I can’t comment on the magnitude of the errors there, but I think a base rate assessment—e.g., how frequently do academic-level economics books turn out to have a shaky thesis?—should again apply.)
1. ^
  Based on my experience studying the subject at university, at least.

Will Aldred Dec 8, 2023, 11:35 PM
12 points
4 ∶ 0
on: I’m interviewing Carl Shulman — what should I ask him?
Importance of the digital minds stuff compared to regular AI safety; how many early-career EAs should be going into this niche? What needs to happen between now and the arrival of digital minds? In other words, what kind of a plan does Carl have in mind for making the arrival go well? Also, since Carl clearly has well-developed takes on moral status, what criteria he thinks could determine whether an AI system deserves moral status, and to what extent.
Additionally—and this one’s fueled more by personal curiosity than by impact—Carl’s beliefs on consciousness. Like Wei Dai, I find the case for anti-realism as the answer to the problem of consciousness weak, yet this is Carl’s position (according to this old Brian Tomasik post, at least), and so I’d be very interested to hear Carl explain his view.
What links here?
- Will Aldred's comment on Matthew_Barnett’s Quick takes by Matthew_Barnett (Feb 3, 2024, 7:56 PM; 13 points)

Will Aldred Dec 7, 2023, 3:47 PM
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lizka’s comment on: Lizka’s Shortform
It took me just under 5 minutes.
The percentages I inputted were best guesses based on my qualitative impressions. If I’d been more quantitative about it, then I expect my allocations would have been better—i.e., closer to what I’d endorse on reflection. But I didn’t want to spend long on this, and figured that adding imperfect info to the commons would be better than adding no info.

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christianDec 6, 2023, 11:26 AM

27 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(www.metaculus.com)

Will Aldred Nov 27, 2023, 11:56 PM
30 points
9 ∶ 2
in reply to: CarlShulman’s comment on: Open Phil Should Allocate Most Neartermist Funding to Animal Welfare
Thank you for engaging. I don’t disagree with what you’ve written; I think you have interpreted me as implying something stronger than what I intended, and so I’ll now attempt to add some colour.
That Emily and other relevant people at OP have not fully adopted Rethink’s moral weights does not puzzle me. As you say, to expect that is to apply an unreasonably high funding bar. I am, however, puzzled that Emily and co. appear to have not updated at all towards Rethink’s numbers. At least, that’s the way I read:
- We don’t use Rethink’s moral weights.
  Our current moral weights, based in part on Luke Muehlhauser’s past work, are lower. We may update them in the future; if we do, we’ll consider work from many sources, including the arguments made in this post.
If OP has not updated at all towards Rethink’s numbers, then I see three possible explanations, all of which I find unlikely, hence my puzzlement. First possibility: the relevant people at OP have not yet given the Rethink report a thorough read, and have therefore not updated. Second: the relevant OP people have read the Rethink report, and have updated their internal models, but have not yet gotten around to updating OP’s actual grantmaking allocation. Third: OP believes the Rethink work is low quality or otherwise critically corrupted by one or more errors. I’d be very surprised if one or two are true, given how moral weight is arguably the most important consideration in neartermist grantmaking allocation. I’d also be surprised if three is true, given how well Rethink’s moral weight sequence has been received on this forum (see, e.g., comments here and here).^[1] OP people may disagree with Rethink’s approach at the independent impression level, but surely, given Rethink’s moral weights work is the most extensive work done on this topic by anyone(?), the Rethink results should be given substantial weight—or at least non-trivial weight—in their all-things-considered views?
(If OP people believe there are errors in the Rethink work that render the results ~useless, then, considering the topic’s importance, I think some sort of OP write-up would be well worth the time. Both at the object level, so that future moral weight researchers can avoid making similar mistakes, and to allow the community to hold OP’s reasoning to a high standard, and also at the meta level, so that potential donors can update appropriately re. Rethink’s general quality of work.)
Additionally—and this is less important, I’m puzzled at the meta level at the way we’ve arrived here. As noted in the top-level post, Open Phil has been less than wholly open about its grantmaking, and it’s taken a pretty not-on-the-default-path sequence of events—Ariel, someone who’s not affiliated with OP and who doesn’t work on animal welfare for their day job, writing this big post; Emily from OP replying to the post and to a couple of the comments; me, a Forum-goer who doesn’t work on animal welfare, spotting an inconsistency in Emily’s replies—to surface the fact that OP does not give Rethink’s moral weights any weight.
1. ^
  Edited to add: Carl has left a detailed reply below, and it seems that three is, in fact, what has happened.

Will Aldred Nov 24, 2023, 12:33 AM
39 points
10 ∶ 5
in reply to: Emily Oehlsen’s comment on: Open Phil Should Allocate Most Neartermist Funding to Animal Welfare
Here, you say, “Several of the grants we’ve made to Rethink Priorities funded research related to moral weights.” Yet in your initial response, you said, “We don’t use Rethink’s moral weights.” I respect your tapping out of this discussion, but at the same time I’d like to express my puzzlement as to why Open Phil would fund work on moral weights to inform grantmaking allocation, and then not take that work into account.

Will Aldred Nov 23, 2023, 7:12 PM
17 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: Marcus Abramovitch 🔸’s comment on: Open Phil Should Allocate Most Neartermist Funding to Animal Welfare
The “EA movement”, however you define it, doesn’t get to control the money and there are good reasons for this.
I disagree, for the same reasons as those given in the critique to the post you cite. Tl;dr: Trades have happened, in EA, where many people have cast aside careers with high earning potential in order to pursue direct work. I think these people should get a say over where EA money goes.

Will Aldred Nov 18, 2023, 7:03 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: zchuang’s comment on: What did AI Safety’s specific funding of AGI R&D labs lead to?
I think the 20% figure, albeit a step in the right direction, is in reality a lot less impressive than it first sounds. From OpenAI’s “Introducing Superalignment” post:
We are dedicating 20% of the compute we’ve secured to date over the next four years to solving the problem of superintelligence alignment.
I expect that 20% of OpenAI’s 2023 compute will be but a tiny fraction of their 2027 compute, given that training compute has been growing by something like 4.2x/year.

Will Aldred Nov 13, 2023, 9:20 PM
3 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: KidsOrNoKids’s comment on: Kids or No Kids
If you go to “Account settings”—which is the second from bottom item when you hover over your user avatar in the top right—then go to “Notifications” then “Private messages,” you can make it so that you’ll receive an email when someone messages you on this forum, to whichever email you used to sign up. (This is in fact the default setting, I believe.) I think as long as you don’t deactivate your account, you can thus ensure that you’ll be notified if someone tries to contact you in the future, even if you’re not actively monitoring your account.

Will Aldred Nov 6, 2023, 2:17 AM
9 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Zach Stein-Perlman’s comment on: Zach Stein-Perlman’s Quick takes
I sometimes post (narrow) reading lists on the forum. Are those actually helpful to anyone?
For what it’s worth, I found your “AI policy ideas: Reading list” and “Ideas for AI labs: Reading list” helpful,^[1] and I’ve recommended the former to three or four people. My guess would be that these reading lists have been very helpful to a couple or a few people rather than quite helpful to lots of people, but I’d also guess that’s the right thing to be aiming for given the overall landscape.
Why don’t there exist better reading lists / syllabi, especially beyond introductory stuff?
I expect there’s no good reason for this, and that it’s simply because it’s nobody’s job to make such reading lists (as far as I’m aware), and the few(?) people who could make good intermediate-to-advanced level readings lists either haven’t thought to do so or are too busy doing object-level work?
1. ^
  Helpful in the sense of: I read or skimmed the readings in those lists that I hadn’t already seen, which was maybe half of them, and I think this was probably a better use of my time than the counterfactual.

Will Aldred Sep 26, 2023, 2:18 PM
6 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lizka’s comment on: Lizka’s Shortform
For anyone interested in watching a dramatic reconstruction of this incident, go to timestamp 43:30–47:05 of The Man Who Saved The World. (I recommend watching at 1.5x speed.)

Will Aldred Sep 25, 2023, 4:41 PM
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Vegans in the UK: are you getting enough iodine?
On the last point: I take this potassium iodide supplement, which I recommend. (I take one capsule every two days.)
I looked into iodine supplements a while ago—the two main forms are potassium iodide and seaweed/kelp. Two or three legit-looking articles I found said that seaweed/kelp-based iodine supplements can contain very different amounts of iodine to what they say on their labels, which seems like a good reason to be wary. (Additionally, a couple other articles claimed that seaweed/kelp supplements contain high levels of toxic heavy metals, but the veracity of this claim wasn’t clear to me.)

Will Aldred Sep 23, 2023, 8:28 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: jacquesthibs’s comment on: jacquesthibs’s Shortform
According to the debate week announcement, Scott Alexander will be writing a summary/conclusion post.

Will Aldred Sep 22, 2023, 10:03 PM
10 points
1 ∶ 1
on: Will Aldred’s Shortform
One thing the AI Pause Debate Week has made salient to me: there appears to be a mismatch between the kind of slowing that on-the-ground AI policy folks talk about, versus the type that AI policy researchers and technical alignment people talk about.
My impression from talking to policy folks who are in or close to government—admittedly a sample of only five or so—is that the main^[1] coordination problem for reducing AI x-risk is about ensuring the so-called alignment tax gets paid (i.e., ensuring that all the big labs put some time/money/effort into safety, and that none “defect” by skimping on safety to jump ahead on capabilities). This seems to rest on the assumption that the alignment tax is a coherent notion and that technical alignment people are somewhat on track to pay this tax.
On the other hand, my impression is that technical alignment people, and AI policy researchers at EA-oriented orgs,^[2] are not at all confident in there being a viable level of time/money/effort that will produce safe AGI on the default trajectory. The type of policy action that’s needed, so they seem to say, is much more drastic. For example, something in the vein of global coordination to slow, limit, or outright stop development and deployment of AI capabilities (see, e.g., Larsen’s,^[3] Bensinger’s, and Stein-Perlman’s debate week posts), whilst alignment researchers scramble to figure out how on earth to align frontier systems.
I’m concerned by this mismatch. It would appear that the game plans of two adjacent clusters of people working to reduce AI x-risk are at odds. (Clearly, this is an oversimplification and there are a range of takes from within both clusters, but my current epistemic status is that this oversimplification gestures at a true and important pattern.)
Am I simply mistaken about there being a mismatch here? If not, is anyone working to remedy the situation? Or does anyone have thoughts on how this arose, how it could be rectified, or how to prevent similar mismatches from arising in the future?
1. ^
  In the USA, this main is served with a hearty side order of “Let’s make sure China in particular never races ahead on capabilities.”
2. ^
  e.g., Rethink Priorities, AI Impacts
3. ^
  I’m aware that Larsen recently crossed over into writing policy bills, but I’m counting them as a technical person on account of their technical background and their time spent in the Berkeley sphere of technical alignment people. Nonetheless, perhaps crossovers like this are a good omen for policy and technical people getting onto the same page.

Will Aldred Sep 22, 2023, 11:43 AM
12 points
8 ∶ 3
in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
We’re issuing a warning for this comment for breaking our Forum norm on civility. We don’t think it was meant to be insulting, based on Linch’s previous Twitter poll (created months ago) and the fact that he himself is not a native speaker. However, we think the stark difference between the Twitter poll and responses here shows that this comment was widely taken as insulting, even if that wasn’t the intent. (I certainly saw it that way before reading the Twitter poll.)
A subsequent comment (“I at least made an effort to understand the language when I immigrated”) was more obviously an attack on titotal, and contributed to this warning.
Linch is an extremely active Forum user whose contributions have been vastly beneficial on net, and this strikes us as an uncharacteristic lapse. A warning doesn’t mean that someone hasn’t been a valuable member of the Forum; however, being a valuable member of the Forum doesn’t insulate someone from moderator action in cases like this.
We feel grateful to the community for responding productively to this situation.
On the constructive side, it’s hard to say what a “better” version of this comment would have looked like; even comments like “I think there may be a language barrier” still imply something along the lines of “you understand me so poorly that I think you may not be fluent in English”.
In the end, we think the best response to a confusing argument is to engage at the points of confusion (if that seems worthwhile), or ignore it (if not).
Another member of our team drafted these sample comments — not as “you should have said exactly X”, but “here’s one shape a better response could have taken”:
Engaging:
From your comment, you seem to think I’m arguing that public investigation is net harmful because the individual cost outweighs the collective benefit. That’s not my argument. Instead, I think that the collective benefit would be higher if someone took the time/energy spent on one public investigation and used it for many private investigations, because private investigations can also be valuable and are much easier to conduct.
It’s important to compare action not just to the null case (“is this better than nothing?”), but also to other possible actions (“is this the best way to handle problem X?”).
Does that response make sense? Did I misread your objection?
Ignoring:
This comment doesn’t address my argument; I think you may have misunderstood me. I don’t plan to engage further.

Will Aldred Sep 18, 2023, 4:43 PM
5 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Greg_Colbourn ⏸️ ’s comment on: Thresholds #1: What does good look like for longtermism?
Directionally, I agree with your points. On the last one, I’ll note that counting person-years (or animal-years) falls naturally out of empty individualism as well as open individualism, and so the point goes through under the (substantively) weaker claim of “either open or empty individualism is true”.^[1]
(You may be interested in David Pearce’s take on closed, empty, and open individualism.)
1. ^
  For the casual reader: The three candidate theories of personal identity are empty, open, and closed individualism. Closed is the common sense view, but most people who have thought seriously about personal identity—e.g., Parfit—have concluded that it must be false (tl;dr: because nothing, not memory in particular, can “carry” identity in the way that’s needed for closed individualism to make sense). Of the remaining two candidates, open appears to be the fringe view—supporters include Kolak, Johnson, Vinding, and Gomez-Emilsson (although Kolak’s response to Cornwall makes it unclear to what extent he is indeed a supporter). Proponents of (what we now call) empty individualism include Parfit, Nozick, Shoemaker, and Hume.

Will Aldred Sep 18, 2023, 2:11 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Arepo’s comment on: Thresholds #1: What does good look like for longtermism?
The problem with this position is that the Black Hole Era—at least, the way the “Five Ages of the Universe” article you link to defines it—only starts after proton decay has run to (effective) completion,^[1] which means that all matter will be in black holes, which means that conscious beings will not exist to farm black holes for their energy. (If do, however, agree that life is in theory not dependent on luminous stars, and so life could continue beyond the Stelliferous Era and into the Degenerate Era, which adds many years.)
1. ^
  Whether proton decay will actually happen is still a major open question in physics. See, for example, Hadhazy (2021) or Siegel (2020).
  (Additionally, if proton decay does happen, there’s then the question of “could a technologically mature civilization stop proton decay?”. My money would be on “no”, but of course our current understanding of particle decay physics could be incorrect, or an advanced civilization might find an ingenious workaround.)

Will Aldred Sep 17, 2023, 8:01 PM
2 points
1 ∶ 3
on: Will Aldred’s Shortform
I just came across this old comment by Wei Dai which has aged well, for unfortunate reasons.
I think a healthy dose of moral uncertainty (and normative uncertainty in general) is really important to have, because it seems pretty easy for any ethical/social movement to become fanatical or to incur a radical element, and end up doing damage to itself, its members, or society at large. (“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” and all that.)

Will Aldred

Me­tac­u­lus Launches Chi­nese AI Chips Tour­na­ment, Sup­port­ing In­sti­tute for AI Policy and Strat­egy Research

Metaculus Launches Chinese AI Chips Tournament, Supporting Institute for AI Policy and Strategy Research