# I am the Watcher. I am your guide through this vast new twtiverse.
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some blogs have a “start here” page that is not the default landing page: why? most people visiting your site will be there for the first time, but they have to perform an additional click to go to the “start here” page, unnecessarily.
if we clone neanderthals/denisovans, we should probably ask them about consciousness.
if we clone neanderthals/denisovans, we should probably ask them about consciousness.
hang web developers by ropes whose length is inversely proportional to the loading time of their pages
hang web developers by ropes whose length is inversely proportional to the loading time of their pages
people liked the old SSC more than ACX because substack is chickenshit minimalism, and it's _slow_. you have to wait for the fucking text & comments to appear, while the old site loaded pretty much instantaneously. people have learned to associate chickenshit minimalism aesthetic with slow loading times, and subconsciously detest it bc of that.
people liked the old SSC more than ACX because substack is chickenshit minimalism, and it's _slow_. you have to wait for the fucking text & comments to appear, while the old site loaded pretty much instantaneously. people have learned to associate chickenshit minimalism aesthetic with slow loading times, and subconsciously detest it bc of that.
Welcome to the Niplaverse! Take a seat over there, your ultrasound-stimulation helmet is being prepared in right order.
Welcome to the Niplaverse! Take a seat over there, your ultrasound-stimulation helmet is being prepared in right order.
what if we kissed 👉👈😳 in front of the whiteboard with haphazard alignment ideas
what if we kissed 👉👈😳 in front of the whiteboard with haphazard alignment ideas
(cringe opinion) eliezer yudkowsky is good actually
(cringe opinion) eliezer yudkowsky is good actually
the answer to all questions is either: “Can you feel your toes right now?”, “Start a long site” or “Talk to more girls”.
the answer to all questions is either: “Can you feel your toes right now?”, “Start a long site” or “Talk to more girls”.
but maybe i'm underestimating the research
but maybe i'm underestimating the research
looking from afar, the quality of science there looks quite abysmal, while the field is very important (finding out how to make humans learn things better! come on!)
looking from afar, the quality of science there looks quite abysmal, while the field is very important (finding out how to make humans learn things better! come on!)
if there's one field ripe for huge progress by a large swath of theoretical physicists invading it, it's probably educational research.
if there's one field ripe for huge progress by a large swath of theoretical physicists invading it, it's probably educational research.
humans have invented mathematics surprisingly early (while the status of the number zero was still being debated in ancient greece), and programming surprisingly late (although algorithms were around for a long time, they didn't catch on until later, even though they seem like an at least equally intuitive concept?)
humans have invented mathematics surprisingly early (while the status of the number zero was still being debated in ancient greece), and programming surprisingly late (although algorithms were around for a long time, they didn't catch on until later, even though they seem like an at least equally intuitive concept?)
who has taken the train to crazytown the furthest? (and hasn't suffered from nervous breakdown in the process)
who has taken the train to crazytown the furthest? (and hasn't suffered from nervous breakdown in the process)
to diversify its lingo, the rationality community should adopt the evidentials smṛti (“I read this in a blogpost”) and śruti (“someone told this to me in a one-on-one”).
to diversify its lingo, the rationality community should adopt the evidentials smṛti (“I read this in a blogpost”) and śruti (“someone told this to me in a one-on-one”).
if we solve distributional shift, do we also solve ontological crises?
if we solve distributional shift, do we also solve ontological crises?
imagine the teeth-grinding if they give schmidhuber a turing award
listening to Gary Marcus right now on what would really impress him with AI advances, and, well,,,,,,,,,,
im gonna turn into schmidhuber if im not careful
maybe my website wants to become a collection of jupyter notebooks?
reply to this with your favourite line of prose you have ever written
reply to this with your favourite line of code you have ever written
plan 9 is very much like lisp in that it is completely unlike lisp. genius.
(kind of tongue in cheek) maybe the worst action i could take right now would be to improve a bunch of reinforcement learning wikipedia pages.
(kind of tongue in cheek) maybe the worst action i could take right now would be to improve a bunch of reinforcement learning wikipedia pages.
Maybe it's true that intelligence depends on the environment, but consider: the environments where policy iteration performs better than RL with temporal difference learning are kind of dumb.
Maybe it's true that intelligence depends on the environment, but consider: the environments where policy iteration performs better than RL with temporal difference learning are kind of dumb.
Breaking News: On-site nuke at Deepmind headquarters in London detonated.
Breaking News: On-site nuke at Deepmind headquarters in London detonated.
graph names that sound like war crimes:
graph names that sound like war crimes:
I'm only paying lisp service to John McCarthy
I'm only paying lisp service to John McCarthy
guy who, when he hears someone mention SARS, thinks of deep Q-learning
guy who, when he hears someone mention SARS, thinks of deep Q-learning
“I wouldn't trust her—I heard she's antisemiotic”
the infinitely abundant patience of the early lw commentariat
i imagine that arriving at vibecamp, the first thing you hear from afar is a chant: “Hot Moloch! Hot Moloch!”
concept: schelling.pt meetup at 0°N 0°E (Null Island)
how do whatsapp/signal/telegram desktop clients work? you'd basically either need to transfer the private key (in which case the encryption isn't e2e anymore?), or generate new keys for every device.
but in that case, I'd worry about bugs in the obscure implementation of that feature.
but maybe there's some obscure way to route around those concerns?
we can't do it with cookies holding the private keys, since many people block cookie usage & cookies are readable by anyone. we'd need to have local storage that the server authenticates for, otherwise any server would be able to read out the private key from storage via js & send it to the attacking server…
as far as i can see, client-side e2e encryption in the browser requires *a bunch* of changes to browser tech?
additionally, some countries (*cough cough*) had some, let's say, embarassing behavior in the world wars
so that's why i think (at least some) european countries are (at least somewhat) more hesitant to go out and intervene in the affairs of others
(don't talk to me about muh pearl harbor, that's a blip compared to what happened in europe.)
on the other hand, the US comes in and there's already a conflict going on elsewhere, it's not quite clear why it's happening, but it looks like it's bad, so “we can go over there and shut up the bad guys” *star spangled banner blares*
none of the two worldwars took place on US soil, and the US entered both conflicts relatively late, so there is less US cultural knowledge about them (mostly in the form of “relative X went overseas and died/came back traumatized”). but in europe, the countries were the place the WWs were happening. and they experienced a different way how those conflicts came to play: countries interfering in the affairs of other countries. this is more clear in the context of WWI: an austrian is shot in serbia, because serbia wants independence, but russia intervenes because it wants to control serbia, and germany & austria fight russia, and france has an alliance with russia, and germany always wanted to fight france anyway, ……… the level of intervention and trying to intervene in other countries' affairs leads to a chain reaction that brings about calamity.
I think I understand why the US and central european countries have so different reactions to foreign interventions/participating in conflicts outside of ones own borders than the US: the US didn't experience the two world wars the way european countries did.
akira: having the property of acquiring
let's not read the thielleaves
let's not read the thielleaves
which doesn't have to be this way! blue tribe & anti-agi risk people have mostly orthogonal concerns (i really don't see the overlap of algorithmic fairness & agent foundations, tbqhwy), and probably ample opportunities for trade (which blue-triber *actually cares* about compute governance etc.?) but i think zero-sum anti-trade genre affiliation thinking from blue-tribes side will prevent most of that mutually beneficial governance from happening.
which doesn't have to be this way! blue tribe & anti-agi risk people have mostly orthogonal concerns (i really don't see the overlap of algorithmic fairness & agent foundations, tbqhwy), and probably ample opportunities for trade (which blue-triber *actually cares* about compute governance etc.?) but i think zero-sum anti-trade genre affiliation thinking from blue-tribes side will prevent most of that mutually beneficial governance from happening.
looks like blue tribe will end up anti agi risk. sucks, but should have been forseeable—the connection to gray tribe & techbros is too strong.
looks like blue tribe will end up anti agi risk. sucks, but should have been forseeable—the connection to gray tribe & techbros is too strong.
new favorite color: space cadet (#1E2952) (not really)
new favorite color: space cadet (#1E2952) (not really)
from now on whenever the word “spirituality” or “consciousness” comes up in a discussion i will look slightly quizzical and ask “yeah, sure, but *can you feel your toes right now*?”
from now on whenever the word “spirituality” or “consciousness” comes up in a discussion i will look slightly quizzical and ask “yeah, sure, but *can you feel your toes right now*?”
i don't know of any Gentle Introduction to Why Prediction Markets are Awesome, à la Wait But Why, with stick figures and just going slow in on the topic, answering objections along the way. i consider it a collective action failure that no such text exists, and also that i don't know of any book that does this (other than superforecasting)
i don't know of any Gentle Introduction to Why Prediction Markets are Awesome, à la Wait But Why, with stick figures and just going slow in on the topic, answering objections along the way. i consider it a collective action failure that no such text exists, and also that i don't know of any book that does this (other than superforecasting)
have to admit that switching to python & numpy for data analysis from klong relieves me from a huge pain in the ass—klong is just *slow* for that.
have to admit that switching to python & numpy for data analysis from klong relieves me from a huge pain in the ass—klong is just *slow* for that.
I just understood that the name Alphabet can also be understood as Alpha-bet – literally the alpha version of bets and betting. huh.
I defend Elon Musk, and then get asked why I like Elon Musk so much, to which I respond that I actually believe that Elon Musk has probably had the worst impact of any human that has ever lived, leaving people confused.
calibration of the intellect, optimism of the will