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If you haven't heard of it yet, I recommend the novel Crystal Society (freely available here, also $5 Kindle version.)
You could accurately describe it as "what Inside Out would have been if it looked inside the mind of an AI rather than a human girl, and if the society of mind had been composed of essentially sociopathic subagents that still came across as surprisingly sympathetic and co-operated with each other due to game theoretic and economic reasons, all the while trying to navigate the demands of human scientists building the AI system".
Brienne also had a good review of it here.
The CFAR fundraiser has only a few days left, and is on $150k out of $400. If you're on the fence about donating, this is a good time. If you haven't already, you might want to read why CFAR?.
I can't donate from this computer, but I intend to donate £875 (~$1250) before the fundraiser expires, representing four months of tithing upfront.
Seeking comments
I'm trying a writing experiment, and want to design as much of a story as possible before starting writing it. I want to make sure I'm not forgetting any obvious details, or leaving out important ideas, so I'd appreciate any comments you can add to my draft design document at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XcgNwELHCU-r7GuYUgDNDDIviThd8Y7Bdto_kMIcmlI/edit . Thank you for your help.
I've briefly looked it up and it's interesting. You've obviously focused a lot on world-building, so kudos to that.
What I'm not seeing is an interesting developement: there are many directions the plot could go, but you need to choose one and explore that.
I don't know much about the literary trope of the last man on Earth, but it's interesting that the protagonist might not be the last man, but the last sane man, akin to "I am legend".
Will there be any kind of conflict? How do you plan the story to end?
Have you read much Feynman? He has some stories of how his father encouraged him to develop the scientific mindset (like this) that might be helpful. The core thing seems to be focusing on the act of thinking things through, not the memory trick of knowing how things are labeled. I'm not sure how to incorporate that into biology, though.
The latest SSC links post links to this post on getting government grants, which sort of set off my possibly-too-good-to-be-true filter, despite the author's apparent sarcasm in the example he gave about bringing in police officers to talk with schoolchildren. Can anyone more knowledgeable comment on this article? Is it realistic for EAs to go out and expect to find government grants that they could get a reasonable amount of utility out of?
My experience is mostly with formula grants, where the grant is mostly a formality like the EFT reimbursement. Many grants have expected recipients. Others are desperately seeking new applicants and ideas. From the outside, it is difficult to tell which is which, and from the inside grantor agencies often have trouble telling why random outsiders are applying to their intentionally exclusive grants but they have trouble finding good applicants for the ones where they want new folks.
https://research.tufts-nemc.org/cear4/AboutUs/WhatistheCEARegistry.aspx
Also look into the Global Burden of Disease.
The title of the article on charity seems clickbait-y to me. I think that if a charity had negative utility, that would imply that burning a sum of money would be preferable to donating that money to that charity. However, this is not the thesis of the article; instead, the article's thesis is:
when non-profit organizations conduct a successful marketing campaign they do not collect more money for charity. Instead they take it away from other charitable causes.
I'm trying to help a dear friend who would like to work on FAI research, to overcome a strong fear that arises when thinking about unfavorable outcomes involving AI. Thinking about either the possibility that he'll die, or the possibility that an x-risk like UFAI will wipe us out, tends to strongly trigger him, leaving him depressed, scared, and sad. Just reading the recent LW article about how a computer beat a professional Go player triggered him quite strongly.
I've suggested trying to desensitize him via gradual exposure; the approach would be similar to the way in which people who are afraid of snakes can lose their fear of snakes by handling rope (which looks like a snake) until handling rope is no longer scary, and then looking at pictures of snakes until such pictures are no longer scary, and then finally handling a snake when they are ready. However, we've been struggling to think of what a sufficiently easy and non-scary first step might be for my friend; everything I've come up with as a first step akin to handling rope has been too scary for him to want to attempt so far.
I don't think that I'll even be able to convince my friend that desensitization training will be worth it at all--he's afraid that the training might trigger him, and leave him in a depression too deep for him to climb out of. At the same time, he's so incredibly nice, and he really wants to help with FAI research, and maybe even work for MIRI in the "unlikely" (according to him) event that he is able to overcome his fears. Are there reasonable alternatives to, say, desensitization therapy? Are there any really easy and non-scary first steps he might be okay with trying if he can be convinced to try desensitization therapy? Is there any other advice that might be helpful to him?
This sounds like someone who's salient feature is math anxiety from high school asking how to be a research director at CERN. It's not just that the salient feature seems at odds with the task, it's that the task isn't exactly something you just walk into, while you sound like you're talking about helping someone overcome a social phobia by taking a part-time job at supermarket checkout. Is your friend someone who wins International Math Olympiads?
If someone has anxiety about a topic, I suggest they go after all the normal anxiety treating methods. SSC has a post about Things that Sometimes Work If You Have Anxeity, though actually going to see a therapist and getting professional help would likely help more.
If he wants to try exposure therapy, good results have apparently recently occurred from doing that while on propranalol.
Hello!
I'm getting into the Bay area this afternoon for the CFAR workshop starting tomorrow. I'm looking for advice on how to spend the time and also where might be a good place to look for affordable lodging for one evening.
I'd initially thought about crashing at the Piedmont house hostel as it's cheap and close enough that I could visit CFAR before heading over tomorrow, but it appears to be sold out. I figured there are probably folks here who know the area or have visited, so I didn't see any harm in asking for info, or checking to see if anyone was getting up to anything.
:) Kim