ShredKazoo
Joined 4 years ago
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679
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Member since
Sep 7
Let's create a wonderful future for all humanity! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zx_WpcwuT3Stpx8GJJHcvJLSgv6dLje0eslVKvuk1yQ/edit#
View on Hacker NewsRecent submissions
Comment · 3 years ago
Was there even a serious policy discussion of banning gain-of-function research?
Gain of function research is supposed to help with pandemics, right? Did it help with COVID?
Comment · 3 years ago
>In real life, intelligence is associated with picking better goals.
"Better" according to what metric?
It may be the case that there is a tendency for high-intelligence humans to pick "more enlightened" goals. Perhaps there is a natural "enlightened goals" attractor for our species.
However I don't think we can extrapolate from that to a fundamentally alien AI.
I think even if this statistical tendency exists, it has clear counterexamples -- consider that 2 genius chess players may have opposite goals, of beating one another. And we shouldn't bet the future of humanity on this statistical tendency extrapolating outside of the original distribution of human species.
Here are some intuition pumps on how diverse goals can be even across intelligent species:
* Orcas killing sharks for their livers: https://www.livescience.com/2-orcas-slaughter-19-sharks-in-a... I don't believe dolphins show the same level of violence, even though both are smart cetaceans
* Intelligent dogs bred to be responsive and attentive to human needs -- unlike close cousins like the wolf
* Chimpanzees and bonobos are both related to humans, both highly intelligent, but with very different culture and goals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Ko0Hzi47U
Comment · 3 years ago
>I don't think it's impossible to come up with arguments against them. For one thing, extrapolating the current gradual rate of progress forwards means that we will get to see several minor "intelligence spills" before the hypothetical big and last one, and by observing what went wrong, humanity will have the opportunity to come up with solutions.
This has been discussed under "warning shots" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/idipkijjz5PoxAwju/warning-sh...
Comment · 3 years ago
See discussion on the EA Forum
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7b9ZDTAYQY9k6FZHS/...
Comment · 3 years ago
Maybe you'll find this useful, I think I saw it elsewhere in this thread and bookmarked it https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards
Comment · 3 years ago
Interesting take.
Comment · 3 years ago
Doesn't that make it harder to do an apples-to-apples comparison between candidates though?
Comment · 3 years ago
What does rewriting your codebase have to do with hiring?
Comment · 3 years ago
How about LinkedIn certificates? Last I checked Triplebyte has a certification you can put on your LinkedIn if you do well enough on their process.
Comment · 3 years ago
Why not just apply at companies that focus on take-home problems?
Comment · 3 years ago
I assume that's a joke? Sounds like going back to manhole covers.
Comment · 3 years ago
It's incredibly cold in the outer solar system right? So why is it that there is liquid water in these moons? Is it some sort of geothermal heating?
What's the most complex life which could conceivably exist in such a cold environment? Presumably there's very little sunlight penetrating through the ice to the liquid ocean.
Comment · 3 years ago
I wonder if there's a way to write a DEB to RPM conversion script with automated testing etc, so Fedora gets to snarf up all existing DEBs :-)
Comment · 3 years ago
This angle works in the other direction as well: Is a newborn a human? If yes, is a baby in the process of being born a human? If yes, is a baby who will be born in a week a human?
My understanding is that opinion polls show most people have a moderate opinion on abortion, which seems pretty reasonable given that "becoming human" is something that happens in a continuous manner over a 9-month period.
Comment · 3 years ago
The "this topic is less-than-maximally-important" critique applies to pretty much every story on the HN homepage.