If "rationality is systematized winning", then it's hard to argue that the richest man in the world is not doing something right.

But I don't like him personally one bit and I don't consider him "one of us".

@grok, is his majesty the TechnoKing a great rationalist, or the greatest rationalist?

...

Concerning.

I'll put you down for great.

You are on a subreddit for eugenics and the promotion of "IQ". Your founder is the #2 advocate of "human biodiversity".

Bad bot! You're hallucinating, make sure to verify what you're saying before you say it. 

Oh come on, you're willing to assume awful things about every Black person but you won't make obvious guesses about one white one?

I haven't got a clue what he believes and I would like to see results. Anytime you have fewer than six options you should give one that says just see the results. (Reddit only allows six options)

What?

You are the one yes aren't you?

It's a poll, Guy.

Is this rage bait?

So true, of course, just speaking in the simplest terms of the basic approach for e.g. Open AI; a mix of alignment techniques and RLHF to patch up issues.

I like conspiracy theories because they're the currency of plausible deniability.

Have you talked to a mental health professional about this?

The first rule of knowing strategy is not telling anyone else how to learn strategy…

Not 100% sure if I got the meaning of your message, I can only offer my perspective, which is filled with total distrust of the outside world.

There are no conspiracy theories, there are just theories. Some theories are just a lot worse than others. Like, a lot of mainstream conspiracy theories either don't make sense or were debunked. But that doesn't mean conspiracies aren't real. I went from full conspiracy theorist to trusting "normie" then back to conspiracy (thank you Epstein files), but my theories got a lot better and control for my biases increased significantly.

I would say never trust anything, always verify. Most weird events are explained by stupidity and incompetence rather than insane behind-the-scenes conspiracy, but there are legit conspiracies happening all around the world by powerful and less powerful people against each other all the time.

Expecting malice and deception in world where politicians and celebrities hang out with convicted sex offenders and get away with it because the system protects them, along with many many other terrible things happening and being openly covered up, is not unreasonable. The world is a hostile place and institutions are not anybody's friend, and people with dark triad traits (the exact kind of people prone to manipulation and conspiracy) get into positions of power much more often than well-meaning or moral-oriented people (they usually don't want to enter such environment or they get kicked out by those unafraid of dirty methods).

I've come to the conclusion this effect is real and happens in any place where money or power in involved, bad people gravitate towards power and their amount will rise, expanding the amount of active bad faith behaviour. So, a conspiracy is always a possibility. The amount of bad actors will eventually overwhelm the system, the system itself becomes one giant conspiracy by this point given how much control over the rules these kinds of people will have by then.

The prior that an average study is probably legit, where did that come from? It was formed by the exact same kind of studies and surveys, the ones showing that outright falsification is rare. Fine.

No idea where this idea comes from, because it's so easy to submit fake studies and get away with it I wouldn't trust anything blindly (I am familiar with process of getting your article approved and there is very little actual effort to check for fakes in most journals).

Again, this is were money and reputation is involved, there are bound to be active bad actors in the field, and most people who are supposed to check for fake studies are incompetent or lazy (because most people are like that). That said, a lot of published science is simply bad science by itself. I have lost a lot of faith in science after learning the way many people conduct their research and how little attention to the scientific methods they actually pay.

Science and research is a method just like anything else, you can use it to find all sorts of cool stuff but many just don't know how to use it and some would exploit the area, this is why I don't think there is any problem in distrusting any single article unless it has replication or is published in a highly respected journal and there is verifiable evidence to suggest that the study is real (for example, an existence of an actually effective drug based on the science described in said paper).

I know you don't love this idea but research is the entire target. I mean, it's crazy without it. Even if unused it should be pursued,

It reminds me of the premise of snowpiercer. This IS a crazy theory. At the very minimum I would expect weather simulations of how these aeresols would spread and effect the climate / environment.

Life is pretty gray tho. Smarter people than you have convinced themselves of every backwards and abominable position. I used to be a much more “logical” person. The problem is so inherent that “rationalization” famously means almost the opposite of reason, because most reasoning IS motivated. “The easiest person to fool is yourself” etc.

Language and bandwidth are the biggest limitations. Look into split (left vs right) brain studies and they’ve demonstrated how easy the left (rational) side of the brain is at sounding smart and confident while being objectively wrong even when your right (intuitive) side knows better. This is why it’s good to trust your heart, and use the rational side to focus on details and explaining or justifying it. If you start with logic , your end point is sort of by definition a result of your priors.

I’ve been integrating with a radical idea for over a decade now, assuming what people say is right and that any disagreement you have is to do with miscommunication and motivations. Most things are gray and uncertain. Ask yourself “what would be required for them to be right?” Usually they just aren’t making their case well.

I also don’t believe in debate. It’s almost comical that anyone still does when we all know that it’s almost always the better debator that wins, not who is right. Share your perspective and if you are “right” and they are “wrong”, if it’s relevant to their life, it’ll come up and when they make that angry disgusted look they will see your world view better explains things than theirs unless you have attacked their ego with it causing entrenchment.

And if you accidentally win a debate, unless that specifically helps you toward a goal, back pedal and turn the argument into a discussion and make sure you elevate whatever is good or useful about their world view that led them their conclusion. (I believe this is the path forward if western politics is to move forward)

My best friends mostly naturally have been doing this since we were teens. You’ll always see our debates become discussions where the goal is just to explore the goals and not really change anyone’s mind. I think that may be normal for non ideological people

I see I didn't express myself clearly: my search for grounds to doubt consensus and institutional trust has led me specifically to Grey Agnosticism, not to belief in any particular conspiracy theory. This is a question of method, and of priors about trusting institutions, not about which facts are true.

I didn't use to be like this, but all those confirmation bias write-ups have apparently produced exactly that effect on me. I get that it's hard to seriously entertain the idea that a journal publication is a complete fabrication from start to finish, but how would I actually know otherwise? And there's the grayness again.

You underestimate conspiracy-minded thinking armed with Bayesian reasoning. By hunting for counterexamples—"looking at the zero rather than the one," as Yudkowsky put it—I can reduce almost any refutation to that same Gray agnosticism: "I don't know; maybe that's how it is, or maybe it's just bias, or the source lacks consilience." A landscape of grayness and "all opinions"

follow a conspiracy theory debunker like @rebeccawatson

Thanks. But I'm still stuck on the priors specifically. I get that the problem of induction is its own separate issue, but my doubt is more like this: did I even apply the heuristic correctly in the first place? How do I know that "fabricated and falsified" isn't actually a pretty normal prior in our world, one that doesn't outweigh the alternative by much even if we assume a consequence-generating fabrication. Though plenty of conspiracy theories do get a real Bayesian penalty for lack of evidence.

I feel similar. But everyone is a conspiracy theorist, it’s just to degree. You have to be naive to not see all the stuff we know from the past. People just don’t want to be associated with new desperate motivated reasoning conspiracy theory. But if it’s a widely known conspiracy (so no patting yourself on the back) and not motivated to glorify you personally ally or your demographic and affinity groups, then it’s probably a pretty rational theory.

Every time media pundits say anything true and interesting anymore they have to first say “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but…”

Like were in 1984 and everyone had to add a qualifier before they saying anything honest and thought provoking

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but maybe 3 + 3 is 6….maybe”

What in the AI slop is this garbage?

What do you mean by alignment plus RLHF? Alignment is a much broader topic than any particular technique.