David Spies

[David Spies @dnspies]

@RichardHanania I usually agree with you on most things and this is a truly terrible take. I really hope it's a joke I'm not getting or something

[David Spies @dnspies]

@RichardHanania There's a big difference between "not denying economics" and "ignoring externalities entirely" and you just leaped face first from the former to the latter. The world getting hotter is _bad_. Species die, crops die, we can't go outside. Air conditioning isn't a fix-all.

[David Spies @dnspies]

@NevinClimenhaga @KelseyTuoc A puddle sitting in a pothole notices that the pothole perfectly conforms to the puddle's shape. It exactly fills every nook and cranny. The puddle thinks to itself: "This pothole must have been intelligently designed to fit me. How else would it fit so perfectly?"

[David Spies @dnspies]

@TheZvi I answered "yes" to both, but would like to add the caveat that IIUC it needs a particular harness which isn't publicly available

[David Spies @dnspies]

@IsaacKing314 I remember cringing at this when I saw it the first time. You have to wonder if TV writers do this stuff on purpose

[David Spies @dnspies]

@IsaacKing314 Agree with the other replies, it's used to mean "injection" but _should_ mean "bijection". Unfortunately, I learned in math class that a bijection is both "one-to-one" (injection) and "onto" (surjection).

[David Spies @dnspies]

@JeremiahDJohns Huh? It's not "involuntary". In Toy Story 1, Woody explains the plan to Sid's mutilated toys saying "We may have to break a few rules" and then they freak him out by coming to life

[David Spies @dnspies]

It feels like you're not engaging with the other side's arguments. This is evident from the fact that we agree on every one of these bullet points except the last one. Even if you disagree, you should at least know where the cruxes are.

- Possible? ✅
- Not next year? ✅ (2 or 3 years maybe)
- Alien drives? ✅
- Computers already outperform humans in some domains? ✅
- "Until we have a working design..." In broad strokes, we already do: Keep scaling up, keep doing RL, keep improving the agentic harness

[David Spies @dnspies]

This all seems basically correct. American children have a high enough probability of solving climate issues when they grow up that their education quality is more important to the environment EV-wise than the extra greenhouse gasses used to keep them cool.

European children have a low probability of doing anything useful, so might as well save the atmosphere a bit at the expense of their comfort and education.

[David Spies @dnspies]

@GreatDecoupling @robinhanson Minus the word "manufactured" I would agree. Nobody _plotted_ to get everyone arguing about trans athletes in the Olympics, but it certainly is a nice break for people trying to do economic policy work.

[David Spies @dnspies]

@robinhanson I don't follow why this poll alone proves the issue is _already_ partisan. I think there's an extra assumption somewhere

[David Spies @dnspies]

@OysteinRunde @robinhanson I don't need to care what he says! He has almost NO quantum transcordiance, meanwhile I'm a level 8 phregonomizer.

[David Spies @dnspies]

@skdh Also, it's not nearly that flat. IIRC from the Monty Python song "A hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light years thick but out by us it's just three thousand light years wide"

[David Spies @dnspies]

@robinhanson I like having markets that support insider trading and also markets that don't allow it. If it turns out nobody wants to bet on markets where they can be exploited by insiders, we'll find out, but we won't be left without any prediction markets

[David Spies @dnspies]

@JimDMiller @RichardHanania I think there's a protectionist perspective and a levers-of-power perspective. Most people worried about AIs taking jobs are worried for protectionist reasons, for which the comparison is apt.
Being worried about the AI using its jobs to take over isn't addressed here.

[David Spies @dnspies]

@egirlian @RichardHanania Thanks for the excellent response. I'm convinced now this is actually pretty bad

[David Spies @dnspies]

@JimDMiller @RichardHanania That's just another way of saying we'll have solved the alignment problem (which IIUC seems unlikely, but hopefully Richard realizes he's not the best person to have an opinion on this)

[David Spies @dnspies]

@Miles_Brundage Imagination = P(doom) * -log(P(doom)) + (1-P(doom)) * -log(1-P(doom))

[David Spies @dnspies]

@Grady_Booch They believe modern AIs are unconscious?