https://nonesense.substack.com/p/lesswrong-house-style
Given that they are imbeciles given, occasionally, to dangerous ideas, I think it’s worth taking a moment now and then to beat them up. This is another such moment.
This is obviously insane, the correct conclusion is that learning models cannot in fact be trained so hard that they will always get the next token correct. This is provable, and it’s not even hard to prove. It’s intuitively obvious, and a burly argument that backs the intuition is easy to build.
You do, however, have to approach it through analogies, through toy models. When you insist on thinking about the whole thing at once, you wind up essentially just saying things that feel right, things that are appealing. You can’t actually reason about the damned thing at all.
this goes a long way towards explaining why computer pseudoscience — like a fundamental ignorance of algorithmic efficiency and the implications of the halting problem — is so common and even celebrated among lesswrongers and other TESCREALs who should theoretically know better
I am reminded of this excellent essay that I saved a while back: "“your brain does not process information and it is not a computer”
Rationalwiki (not affiliated with LW Rationalists, the opposite actually, op is a mod there) has a page on it. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Less_wrong
Ok rationalwiki actually seems like a really useful resource for reading up on which sexy new movements are bullshit and which aren’t
It’s complicated.
It’s basically a forum created to venerate the works and ideas of that guy who in the first wave of LLM hype had an editorial published in TIME where he called for a worldwide moratorium on AI research and GPU sales to be enforced with unilateral airstrikes, and whose core audience got there by being groomed by one the most obnoxious Harry Potter fanfictions ever written, by said guy.
Their function these days tends to be to provide an ideological backbone of bad scifi justifications to deregulation and the billionaire takeover of the state, which among other things has made them hugely influential in the AI space.
They are also communicating vessels with Effective Altruism.
If this piques your interest check the links on the sidecard.
They are also communicating vessels with Effective Altruism.
I have a basic understanding of what EA is but what do you mean by communicating vessels?