Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Interview with gwern

dwarkeshpatel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 262 posts

Re: Interview with gwern

#211

Post by freejazz »

dash2 wrote: post #62
Quinzel wrote: post #9

I don’t believe Gwern lives as frugally as he’s described in this (if this even actually is the real Gwern). I’m 100% sure that he has a persona he likes to portray and being perceived as frugal is a part of that persona. When it comes to answering the question “who is gwern?” I reckon Gwern’s a plant a seed in people’s mind type of guy, and let them come up with the rest of the story. Still, I like a lot of his writ…

Have you got any real evidence behind your first paragraph?

I think it would be more odd to take someone with such a shtick at their word, but skepticism abounds either way.

Re: Interview with gwern

#212

Post by JohnBooty »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #200

This was a tough listen, for two subtly similar reasons. The voice was uncanny. Simply hard to listen to, despite being realistic. I mean precisely that: it is cognitively difficult to string together meaning from that voice. (I am adjacent to the field of audio production and frequently deal with human- and machine-produced audio. The problem this podcast has with this voice is not unique.) The tonality and meaning…

    The voice was uncanny. Simply hard to listen to, 
    despite being realistic. I mean precisely that: it 
    is cognitively difficult to string together meaning 
    from that voice.
What? According to the information under the linked video,

    In order to protect Gwern's anonymity, I proposed 
    interviewing him in person, and having my friend Chris 
    Painter voice over his words after. This amused him 
    enough that he agreed.
I'm not familiar with the SOTA in AI-generated voices, so I could very well be mistaken.

But it did not sound fake to me, and the linked source indicates that it's a human.

Perhaps it sounds uncanny to you because it's a human reading a transcript of a conversation.... and attempting to make it sound conversational, as if he's not reading a transcript?

Re: Interview with gwern

#213

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

tptacek wrote: post #209
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that HBD claims -- at least, those made in reasonably good faith -- are based on genetic determinism. A Bosnian guy from the Dinaric alps is much more likely to be >1.8m in stature than a Pygmy. This is not predetermined as such, it's just that one population has something like +3SD in stature over the other. (An admittedly wildly extreme example!) Differences in IQ between groups are apparently far mor…

I don't understand the alternative interpretation you're alluding to. Stipulate the validity of IQ or the common g . If group variations in these metrics aren't caused by genes, why are they distasteful? If they are, you're describing genetic determinism, which, again, is orthogonal to heritability.

Heritability is a statistical concept, not a measure of genetic determinism. High heritability doesn’t imply that a trait one exhibits, such as IQ or height, is entirely predetermined by one's genes. Even eye color is only heritable to ~0.98. I'll grant that any trait heritable to 1.0 is indeed entirely predetermined by one's genes -- though, offhand, I'm not sure that such traits exist in humans.

That aside, we're getting into semantics. Whether you call it "genetic determinism" or "heritability," we're talking about durable group differences in genetically-mediated traits. And that is what people may find distasteful or even heretical.

Re: Interview with gwern

#214

Post by wavemode »

mapt wrote: post #83
keiferski wrote: post #56

By writing, you are voting on the future of the Shoggoth using one of the few currencies it acknowledges: tokens it has to predict. If you aren't writing, you are abdicating the future or your role in it. If you think it's enough to just be a good citizen, to vote for your favorite politician, to pick up litter and recycle, the future doesn't care about you. These AI predictions never, ever seem to factor in how actu…

With AI you need to think, long and hard, about the concept (borrowed from cryptography), "Today, the state of the art in is the worst it will ever be". Humanity is pinning its future on the thought that we will hit intractable information-theoretic limitations which provide some sort of diminishing returns on performance before a hard takeoff, but the idea that the currently demonstrated methods are high up on some…

> dramatically higher performance this year than last year, and were dramatically better last year than the year before

Yeah, but, better at _what_?

Cars are dramatically faster today than 100 years ago. But they still can't fly.

Similarly, LLMs performing better on synthetic benchmarks does not demonstrate that they will eventually become superintelligent beings that will replace humanity.

If you want to actually measure that, then these benchmarks need to start asking questions that demonstrate superintelligence: "Here is a corpus of all current research on nuclear physics, now engineer a hydrogen bomb." My guess is, we will not see much progress.

Re: Interview with gwern

#216

Post by trogdor »

scarmig wrote: post #77
mbustamanter wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a comment on the r/slatestarcodex subreddit with supposedly true information about him (which I found googling 'who is gwern'), but it left me with even more questions. EDIT: grammar

That comment is just a fanciful flight of whimsy. > Gwern was the first patient to successfully complete a medical transition to the gender he was originally assigned at birth... his older brother died of a Nuvigil overdose in 2001... his (rather tasteful) neck tattoo of the modafinil molecule The only concrete things we know about gwern are that he's a world-renowned breeder of Maine Coons and that he is the sole kn…

> The only concrete things we know about gwern are that he's a world-renowned breeder of Maine Coons and that he is the sole known survivor of a transverse cerebral bifurcation.

How do you know those things are true?

Re: Interview with gwern

#217

Post by tptacek »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #213
tptacek wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the alternative interpretation you're alluding to. Stipulate the validity of IQ or the common g . If group variations in these metrics aren't caused by genes, why are they distasteful? If they are, you're describing genetic determinism, which, again, is orthogonal to heritability.

Heritability is a statistical concept, not a measure of genetic determinism. High heritability doesn’t imply that a trait one exhibits, such as IQ or height, is entirely predetermined by one's genes. Even eye color is only heritable to ~0.98. I'll grant that any trait heritable to 1.0 is indeed entirely predetermined by one's genes -- though, offhand, I'm not sure that such traits exist in humans. That aside, we're g…

Are we talking past each other? I'm saying: heritability is orthogonal to the question of whether a trait is determined by genetics. There are traits with no genetic component at all that are highly heritable, and vice versa. "Genetic determinism" doesn't mean "a guarantee that a group of genetically similar people will display a trait"; it means "the trait is causally linked to genes".

The semantics matter, because the evidence supporting HBD positions is stated in terms of the technical definition of heritability.

While I've got you, can I ask that you stop evoking "heresy" and "distaste" in this thread? I believe I'm making simple, objective points, not summoning opprobrium on your position.

Re: Interview with gwern

#218

Post by admksx45v65uqpw »

dewey wrote: post #47
djmips wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about just listening to the interview then?

I'm aware of that possibility but I don't mind watching the other interviewer and I'm also not sure if there's something being shown (screenshots etc.) after the first few minutes I watched. I know it's probably a "me problem" ;)

[dead]

Re: Interview with gwern

#219

Post by Vecr »

trogdor wrote: post #216
scarmig wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That comment is just a fanciful flight of whimsy. > Gwern was the first patient to successfully complete a medical transition to the gender he was originally assigned at birth... his older brother died of a Nuvigil overdose in 2001... his (rather tasteful) neck tattoo of the modafinil molecule The only concrete things we know about gwern are that he's a world-renowned breeder of Maine Coons and that he is the sole kn…

> The only concrete things we know about gwern are that he's a world-renowned breeder of Maine Coons and that he is the sole known survivor of a transverse cerebral bifurcation. How do you know those things are true?

They aren't, he doesn't even live in Maine.

Re: Interview with gwern

#220

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

tptacek wrote: post #217
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heritability is a statistical concept, not a measure of genetic determinism. High heritability doesn’t imply that a trait one exhibits, such as IQ or height, is entirely predetermined by one's genes. Even eye color is only heritable to ~0.98. I'll grant that any trait heritable to 1.0 is indeed entirely predetermined by one's genes -- though, offhand, I'm not sure that such traits exist in humans. That aside, we're g…

Are we talking past each other? I'm saying: heritability is orthogonal to the question of whether a trait is determined by genetics. There are traits with no genetic component at all that are highly heritable, and vice versa. "Genetic determinism" doesn't mean "a guarantee that a group of genetically similar people will display a trait"; it means "the trait is causally linked to genes". The semantics matter, because…

Sure, heritability is orthogonal to the question of whether a trait is determined by genetics.

But traits like IQ, height, and eye color are both (A) highly heritable and (B) substantially shaped by genetic factors. In casual online discourse, I believe that (B) is usually taken for granted, so it's glossed over, and when people say that any given trait is "heritable" they're also assuming that (B) is true for the trait. At least, I am guilty of that lapse.

And I take your point about language.

Post reply on HN