What’s the problem? We took nationalist names (Mexico, Ontario) and used the hemisphere appropriate term. If anything we’re more culturally progressive for doing it.
Lake Ontario wasn't a "nationalist" name. It's an anglicised version of the Wyandot name for the lake. The Canadian province is named after the lake, not the other way around.
It is indeed wrong if it were trying to show a list of people who have helped humanity, but that is clearly not what it was intended to show. The specifically define what they're showing as market value of company a founder created minus the amount that the founder took out of the company. In so doing, it downgrades Elon Musk considerably presumably because he's retained so much of the shares of his companies.
The other thing about this article is that it contains falsifiable claims that are, well, false. Consider the following direct quote: "The 2028 election cycle is heated, as usual. AI is the biggest topic." No poll of the American public has AI as one of the top concerns except in polls where the question is specifically about AI. The general polls show topics like healthcare costs, inflation/affordability, government dysfunction, and immigration as the top concerns. AI doesn't even show up in the top 20 in every list I looked at (Gallup, Pew, YouGov).
It sounds more like "everybody I know thinks AI is the top concern" when everybody they know is people like them, i.e. an echo chamber. It gives me no confidence in any other claims.
The AI 2040 writing and the AI 2027 before it both sprang from within the rationalist communities. Scott Alexander (of the popular rationalist Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten blog) played a role in both articles, though he says he chose to leave his name off of this one.
AGI and AI doom scenarios have been evergreen topics in rationalism for years. Long before we had enough compute power to do anything at all useful with generative AI. Many of the rationalist scenarios about future AIs had very religious themes where the AI became so powerful that it was effectively a god.
Rationalists had concept's like Roko's Basilisk, a thought experiment where a future all-powerful AI might choose to punish anyone who predicted the arrival of AI but failed to contribute to the arrival of AI.
The rationalist communities took this thought experiment so seriously that the biggest rationalist forum of the time formally banned discussion of Roko's Basilisk for 5 years. They believed it was an "info hazard" because once you knew about this risk, you either had to contribute to bringing about this future AI god or you risked being punished by it in the future.
If this is new to you, you might think I'm exaggerating or making things up to make a group look bad, but this was such a core belief that it has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk
The people writing AI 2027 and AI 2040 were immersed in these cultures. That's why they think that AI is the primary topic that anyone is talking about in elections, just like the Bitcoin people all thought crypto was the only relevant election topic.
The GP comment is getting attacked, but there really is a heavy religious fervor background to the AI fears in the rationalist community. The religious angle and extremism of the forums is downplayed when in crosses over into mainstream topics, but it's been there from the start.
First I was intrigues by the rationalist movement, but I was deeply disappointed. To put it bluntly, seems to me like geeks LARPing as philosophers, and not with rational argument as they promise, but rationalizing their sci fi fanfictions.
If I recall correctly, the text of Yudkowsky's response to Roko's Basilisk used to be part of the Wikipedia page but was removed and not even a reference link was provided even though the response was mentioned in the body of the article. For posterity's sake, from https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk/Original_pos... here it is in all its hilariously unhinged glory:
"One might think that the possibility of CEV punishing people couldn't possibly be taken seriously enough by anyone to actually motivate them. But in fact one person at SIAI was severely worried by this, to the point of having terrible nightmares, though ve wishes to remain anonymous. I don't usually talk like this, but I'm going to make an exception for this case.
Listen to me very closely, you idiot.
YOU DO NOT THINK IN SUFFICIENT DETAIL ABOUT SUPERINTELLIGENCES CONSIDERING WHETHER OR NOT TO BLACKMAIL YOU. THAT IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING WHICH GIVES THEM A MOTIVE TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON THE BLACKMAIL.
There's an obvious equilibrium to this problem where you engage in all positive acausal trades and ignore all attempts at acausal blackmail. Until we have a better worked-out version of TDT and we can prove that formally, it should just be OBVIOUS that you DO NOT THINK ABOUT DISTANT BLACKMAILERS in SUFFICIENT DETAIL that they have a motive to ACTUALLY BLACKMAIL YOU.
If there is any part of this acausal trade that is positive-sum and actually worth doing, that is exactly the sort of thing you leave up to an FAI. We probably also have the FAI take actions that cancel out the impact of anyone motivated by true rather than imagined blackmail, so as to obliterate the motive of any superintelligences to engage in blackmail.
Meanwhile I'm banning this post so that it doesn't (a) give people horrible nightmares and (b) give distant superintelligences a motive to follow through on blackmail against people dumb enough to think about them in sufficient detail, though, thankfully, I doubt anyone dumb enough to do this knows the sufficient detail. (I'm not sure I know the sufficient detail.)
You have to be really clever to come up with a genuinely dangerous thought. I am disheartened that people can be clever enough to do that and not clever enough to do the obvious thing and KEEP THEIR IDIOT MOUTHS SHUT about it, because it is much more important to sound intelligent when talking to your friends. This post was STUPID.
(For those who have no idea why I'm using capital letters for something that just sounds like a random crazy idea, and worry that it means I'm as crazy as Roko, the gist of it was that he just did something that potentially gives superintelligences an increased motive to do extremely evil things in an attempt to blackmail us. It is the sort of thing you want to be EXTREMELY CONSERVATIVE about NOT DOING.)"
This seems out of line with what you were saying above. Do you mean you would put money on a position less favorable than 50/50? What do you consider the likelihood such that you think you can announce it to be false today? 99%? I'd happily offer 30 to 1 odds on this today and add a 3x buffer for you up to $1000 of my dollars if you're serious.
I'm confused. In the original comment I pointed out that the article claims AI is a major topic when polls show that isn't the case. I still believe that in 2028 AI will not be a major topic as shown by polls and voting behavior.
I'm not sure how I'd formulate the bet, but maybe it could be "as of election day 2028, AI will not be a top five concern mentioned in the most recent open-ended poll by Gallup polling the American public. This bet will not be decided by a poll in which AI is specifically mentioned in the polling question."
Not clear on where you're confused. The article does not claim this is the state today, it says in 2028- did you misread? In any event I think this is entirely plausible, say >9%, based on trendlines and the fact that I hear about this constantly already- two of the candidates in my primary had a position on this and I'm not exactly in SF. I'm prepared to hand you as much as $1k in the 91% of worlds where this doesn't happen in exchange for 30x as much (eg. 30k) in the 9% of worlds where it does. EV for me is .91 * -1 + .09 * 30 = +1.79. You claim you can say already today that this is false; I assume that means you're >99% certain. EV for you is then .99 * 1 + .01 * -30 = +0.69 (nice). Thus there is a mutually beneficial trade at the >3x your position and <1/3x my position point, and I offer 30:1 odds. I don't care if this is a nominal one of my dollars to thirty of yours, $1k is just my limit.
I don't normally do this, but you brought up your willingness to bet so I figured I'd offer.
I didn't think it was possible you misread- you had like 5 replies calling this out, but I recall them being gray and maybe you have showdead disabled- but don't feel obliged to commit if your real probability is 97% for this.
This term:
>This bet will not be decided by a poll in which AI is specifically mentioned in the polling question.
I cannot honor. In the >9% of worlds where you are wrong, any poll that excludes AI is necessarily heavily biased against me. Better to pick a particular poll.
This prediction can't be scored until the 2028 election cycle.
You may think it's very unlikely the prediction will have turned out to be correct by the 2028 election cycle, but that is not the same thing as the prediction being scorable as false today.
In my now long lifetime, I can't tell you how many times I've heard the phrase "This time it really is different" for it to turn out that it really wasn't all that different. Maybe this time it is, but I'd put my bet on isn't.
>In my now long lifetime, I can't tell you how many times I've heard the phrase...
Russell's Turkey Parable:
"The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken."
> In my now long lifetime, I can't tell you how many times I've heard the phrase "This time it really is different"
This isn't an argument and it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of risk and game theory.
Besides, it's always been different, in the sense of boiling frog temperature going up. The present case is more different because this time, the rate of rising is high enough to make the frogs uncomfortable... and you're trying to calm them down and keep them in the water:
> Look frogs, the temps've always been rising, "many times I've heard the phrase "This time it really is different" for it to turn out that it really wasn't all that different."
> Maybe this time it is, but I'd put my bet on isn't.
Bro, it's not about betting... you have to try hard to learn something about risk.
Can't all those bodily signals (from the article: heart activity, breathing patterns, sweat response, blood flow and temperature) be measured with an Apple iWatch?
Pedantic comment: There is no such thing as an Apple iWatch; they finally did it right and named a product without `i` in front. Just Apple Watch. My guess is the level of detail the "signals" can be seen is what matters. Apple Watch is good for some things but its not constant its only checking in from time to time to get a reading. Purpose built device probably has higher details (faster polling or something) than a small thing on your wrist.
Total overreach. I go from one pedal driving on my EV to my manual 5 speed 2004 Saab on a regular basis. I've been doing this for 6.5 years. I'm really glad nobody has been telling me that I can't do it.
> In 2024, a new energy vehicle brand conducted a user survey, revealing that 32% of car owners had mistakenly used the accelerator pedal as the brake pedal in emergencies, with 15% resulting in accidents.
> A simulation test by Tsinghua University's Automotive Safety Laboratory also showed that drivers accustomed to the one-pedal mode had an average reaction time 0.3 seconds longer when pressing the brake pedal in an emergency, equivalent to an additional braking distance of 8.3 meters at 100 km/h.
I learned to drive on a manual car, and all my cars were manual for the past ~20 years. My current car is an ev/auto.
For me the learning curve was remembering to _not_ press the brake with my left foot, thinking it's the clutch when I'm mentally downshifting or stopping. A left foot on the brake thinking it's the clutch is for sure a powerful thing!
