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ESYudkowsky's profile
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Verified account
@ESYudkowsky

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Eliezer YudkowskyVerified account

@ESYudkowsky

Ours is the era of inadequate AI alignment theory. Any other facts about this era are relatively unimportant, but sometimes I tweet about them anyway.

Joined June 2014

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    Eliezer Yudkowsky‏Verified account @ESYudkowsky 11 Dec 2017

    Eliezer Yudkowsky Retweeted K

    I have a lot of detractors not smart enough to understand large numbers. I say X is better than (bignum >> googolplex) people suffering the tiniest noticeable pain, and the # gets rounded down to "billions" or "quintillions".https://twitter.com/just_an_initial/status/940110359133851648 …

    Eliezer Yudkowsky added,

    K @just_an_initial
    Replying to @rechelon
    You're sounding like Yudkowsky, with his "torture people to prevent quintillions of pinpricks" policy
    1:33 PM - 11 Dec 2017
    • 3 Retweets
    • 33 Likes
    • Jesin00 terrien Necroeconomiconomist 🌐 Bweep Joe Choo-Choy FollowsSpace Member Of Species John Dickson Allan Blanchard
    11 replies 3 retweets 33 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. Random832‏ @Random832 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        Playing gotcha with word games is a distraction from your underlying assumption that utility functions must be linear.

        2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
      3. Eliezer Yudkowsky‏Verified account @ESYudkowsky 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @Random832

        It's not a little gotcha! Even on the most naive numbers, billions of people with dust specks in their eyes are quantitatively better than 50 years of torment. And you need doubly-exponential quantities, like a googolplex, to make the obvious argument from circular preferences.

        3 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
      4. Eliezer Yudkowsky‏Verified account @ESYudkowsky 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky @Random832

        Where the preference chain is "Clearly X people getting two dust specks in their eyes is better than googol*X people getting one dust speck in their eye" (...) "One victim for 50 years is better than a googol people tormented for fifty years minus one second."

        0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
      5. End of conversation
      1. New conversation
      2. Alex Zvorygin, Ghost of‏ @Zvorygin 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        Can we use words like uneducated or ignorant I dunno

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      3. Eliezer Yudkowsky‏Verified account @ESYudkowsky 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @Zvorygin

        Ignorant but mentally healthy people say "I don't know" or "incomprehensibly large". An alternative sort of person (who often hates me) rounds down to a quintillion, because that is the largest number they know, so it must be as large as anything gets.

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
      4. Alex Zvorygin, Ghost of‏ @Zvorygin 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        I think mentally healthy is an even worse descriptor, unless your definition of mentally healthy includes like, more than half of the population. I don't think you have to be particularly smart or mentally healthy to understand big numbers, you just need to be taught.

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
      5. Eliezer Yudkowsky‏Verified account @ESYudkowsky 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @Zvorygin

        Stupid is not "not knowing what a googolplex is", it's the way of thinking "what I don't understand can't be important so I'll round it to a quintillion".

        1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
      6. Alex Zvorygin, Ghost of‏ @Zvorygin 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        Ok I guess I misunderstood your tweet then.

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
      7. End of conversation
      1. New conversation
      2. Paul Crowley‏ @ciphergoth 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        It would have been better if you'd used a googleplex in the first case I think. But yes, this a classic "I'll sneer at this argument by making it clear to the world I completely don't understand it".

        2 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
      3. Eliezer Yudkowsky‏Verified account @ESYudkowsky 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ciphergoth

        It's hard to guess in advance, rather than in retrospect, which part the idiots will misquote, or what wordsmithing is needed to prevent it. But yes, I now know to use googolplexes rather than Ackermann numbers in thought experiments requiring bignums.

        0 replies 0 retweets 6 likes
      4. End of conversation
      1. New conversation
      2. Vitalik Non-giver of Ether‏Verified account @VitalikButerin 12 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        Hey, I'm pro-torture at quintillions and anti-torture at billions. Learn to differentiate the two!

        3 replies 5 retweets 18 likes
      3. 1 more reply
      1. New conversation
      2. gwern‏ @gwern 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        Hm. Is rounding 3^^^3 to 'quintillions' literally the biggest understatement in human history?

        2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
      3. Paul Crowley‏ @ciphergoth 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @gwern @ESYudkowsky

        No, but only because other similar commentators have rounded it to "billions".

        0 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
      4. End of conversation
      1. Victor Poughon‏ @victorpoughon 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        How do you know the utility of pain is additive across individuals ? Seems to me that a complex utility aggregation function is more morally intuitive. One with enough non linearities to have hard threshold effects on X.

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      1. Alex Hauser‏ @DarthAlexandus 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        Actually I think what they're rounding down is the tiniest noticeable pain to zero, so in their minds the comparison becomes 1 human with an impacted life vs 0 humans with impacted lives

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      1. Ayenem‏ @TheAyenem 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        Has there or will there ever be a bignum of people ? It's an eternally virtual paradigme, not to mention that there should be a higher upper limit than a needle prick for going from slight inconvenience to actual pain that's equatable to torture after multiplication by bignum.

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      1. Alexander Davis‏ @ADeebus 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        What you're calling a lack of smarts might just be the general human difficulty with grasping the difference between the scope of the two quantities of big numbers. People already have a hard time with grasping billion and trillion.

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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      1. joshcryer‏ @joshcryer 12 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        My favorite test of the number line for my nephew or nieces is to place objects down ten units (of the object) from one another and have them tell me where 100 or 1000 units would be. 1000 always surprises them (the first time). With that I don't think about large numbers.

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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      1. New conversation
      2. Hal Morris‏ @HalMorris3 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @ESYudkowsky

        Following 'K': but first generate quintillions of ems, use "non-speciesist" logic, and it's the ems that don't get pinpricks, and you've justified torture, if you're a total kneejerk utilitarian.

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      3. Daniel Houck‏ @daniel_houck 11 Dec 2017
        Replying to @HalMorris3 @ESYudkowsky

        1. Quintillions isn't big enough 2. If you generate a lot of people just to hurt or threaten them, you are being evil. Maybe torture is the lesser of two evils.

        0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
      4. End of conversation

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