Eliezer Yudkowsky
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“If you only try to do what seems humanly possible, you will ask too little of yourself. When you imagine reaching up to some higher and inconvenient goal, all the convenient reasons why it is “not possible” leap readily to mind. The most important role models are dreams: they come from within ourselves. To dream of anything less than what you conceive to be perfection is to draw on less than the full power of the part of yourself that dreams.” (Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationality)
^47d21b
Some great Eliezer Yudkowsky poetry.
“If you only try to do what seems humanly possible, you will ask too little of yourself. When you imagine reaching up to some higher and inconvenient goal, all the convenient reasons why it is “not possible” leap readily to mind. The most important role models are dreams: they come from within ourselves. To dream of anything less than what you conceive to be perfection is to draw on less than the full power of the part of yourself that dreams.” (Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationality)
^47d21b
Some great Eliezer Yudkowsky poetry.
“Your trust will not break, until you apply all that you have learned here and from other books, and take it as far as you can go, and find that this too fails you—that you have still been a fool, and no one warned you against it—that all the most important parts were left out of the guidance you received—that some of the most precious ideals you followed steered you in the wrong direction— —and if you still have something to protect, so that you must keep going, and cannot resign and wisely acknowledge the limitations of rationality— —then you will be ready to start your journey as a rationalist. To take sole responsibility, to live without any trustworthy defenses, and to forge a higher Art than the one you were once taught.” (Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationality)
Peak Eliezer Yudkowsky poetry.
Eliezer Yudkowsky gives Rationality, From A to Z#^1239ba|a couple examples of flawed ways we value human life.
A lot of my thoughts on this topic are taken from Eliezer Yudkowsky’s writings. I’ve added my own thoughts and am trying to shape the ideas in a way that makes them easier to wrap my head around, but I would not claim much originality here.
There are two concepts from Eliezer Yudkowsky’s writings that I have found separately useful as a structure for understanding thought. I want to lay them out here in basic form as I hope to explore them more in future notes.
Which Universal Turing Machine? There are actually infinite sets of rules that can simulate all other rules, which is to be used for Solomonoff Induction. This choice affects the length of the hypotheses, and thus the probability we place on them. (doesn’t Eliezer Yudkowsky have something to say about this? he seemed to have an explanation of Occam’s Razor that might assume a specific Universal Turing Machine). In any case, different Universal Turing Machine rules don’t significantly change the hypothesis length relative to the compiler.
In Rationality, From A to Z, Eliezer Yudkowsky often describes how rationality (more or less what I call Probabilistic Thinking) can be like a martial art. It is an interesting comparison, though I don’t know if I agree with all parts of it.
Good point by Eliezer Yudkowsky about how what we feel to be reality is really our beliefs about reality. This then makes it the case that Beliefs of beliefs just feel like beliefs.
The idea that Societal optimization power changes with time implies that it might not be time itself that changes things for the better, but rather Optimization power in versus optimized product out. Eliezer Yudkowsky uses this to argue that we should not carry forward a history of positive change through an AI revolution, since we are not sure how that will impact Optimization power in versus optimized product out
“Your trust will not break, until you apply all that you have learned here and from other books, and take it as far as you can go, and find that this too fails you—that you have still been a fool, and no one warned you against it—that all the most important parts were left out of the guidance you received—that some of the most precious ideals you followed steered you in the wrong direction— —and if you still have something to protect, so that you must keep going, and cannot resign and wisely acknowledge the limitations of rationality— —then you will be ready to start your journey as a rationalist. To take sole responsibility, to live without any trustworthy defenses, and to forge a higher Art than the one you were once taught.” (Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationality)
Peak Eliezer Yudkowsky poetry.
Eliezer Yudkowsky calls this “mutual information” and the “symmetric probability flow”. ^[ Rationality, From A to Z#^27ecf7]